Cuban Drama Today

CUBAN DRAMA TODAY WHATEVER ELSE MAY HAVE BEEN THE RESULTS OF the Cuban Revolution , it has proved to be a volatile force in the theater. Prior to 1959, drama in Cuba was in a precarious position. The gradual decay of the teatro verndculo~ a comic form similar to the sainete and based on popular types and facile humor, and the cessation of visits by the staple Spanish companies as a result of the Spanish Civil War and the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s, left Cuba almost without an organized theater of any importance. Sporadic attempts at renovation, aimed largely at the creation of a public accustomed to serious theater, were of no conspicuous success, although the new movement which began to emerge about 1954 produced a number of playwrights of interest. Chief among these were Virgilio Pifiera, a highly versatile dramatist whose chief interest is social criticism, Carlos Felipe, preoccupied with Freudianism, and a younger group composed of Nora Badia, Rolando Ferrer, Rene Buch, and Eduardo Manet, who attempted to develop a theater of psychological orientation and poetic expression. Despite the undeniable quality of much of their work, these authors wrote with little hope that their works would be staged by any other than small experimental groups. In the period 1954-1958, professional and semiprofessional Cuban companies staged only thirty plays, and many of these were inferior comedy or slapstick farce. Among the earliest activities of the new government was the conscious effort to stimulate the theater, largely through festivals and competitions sponsored by the Casa de las Americas. In 1959 the Teatro Nacional was established as a means of training younger dramatists and actors; among other activities, they have invited a number of distinguished dramatists from other Latin American nations to serve as playwrights in residence. The Teatro Infantil was created in 1961, and among its mainstays have been the adaptations by Manet. Recently. the Consejo Nacional de Cultura founded the Teatro Experimental, under the direction of Ant6n Arrufat, for the purpose of presenting new plays and new approaches to older works. The first play staged was Francisco Valerio's bufo piece, Perro huevero~ aunque le quemen el hocieo (1868); later productions have included Jarry's Ubu Roi, Beckett's Waiting for Godo!, Pifiera's Aire Frio, and Diirrenmatt's The Visit. There is also a regional Consejo de Cultura for each province, and these six groups sponsored the 1961 Festival de Teatro Obrero 153 154 MODERN DRAMA September Campesino, in which fifteen one-acters-nine by Cuban authorswere performed. Government figures estimate the number of active amateur groups of this sort at twenty-eight, with some two thousand people involved. As the title of the festival indicates, this program is an effort to use theater as a method of political indoctrination in unions, cooperatives, and rural villages, and includes a good deal of children's theater and puppet plays. The titles of several of the plays are indicative: La reforma agraria and Como dijo Fidel. Also included , however, were Brecht's Mother Carrar's Rifles~ Casona's Farsa y justicia del corregidor~ and the 13th century French farce, T he Lawyer~ the Baker and the Shepherd, as well as two anonymous improvised comedies with music presented by workers' groups. The activity of the government is not restricted to social indoctrination . The same year of 1961 saw five plays in a Brecht festival, a Chekhov festival also of five plays, and an homage to Garda Lorca in which were presented Yerma~ El retablillo de don Cristobita, Los amores de don Perlimplin con Belisa en su jardin, La casa de Bernarda Alba~ Mariana Pineda, and La zapatera prodigiosa. In addition to this program of world theater, there has been a conscious effort to reassess the works of Cuban theater of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This is particularly true of the popular teatro bufo, to the extent that Arrufat has called the teatro bufo "... el unieo teatro lirico importante que nos leg6 el siglo pasado, el unico movimiento que podra. adquirir alguna vigencia." Certainly Arrufat's own work shows a clear influence of the bufo. This interest, however, is of two types. First, modern dramatists are intrigued by...