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CASONA AND LOPEZ RUBIO: THEATER AS REAL AS LIFE by Elizabeth S. Rogers m J ? ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 135 CASONA AND LOPEZ RUBIO: THEATER AS REAL AS LIFE by Elizabeth S. Rogers* Since classical times man has been intrigued by the concept of theatrum mundi, the idea that "the world's a stage," and has perceived the theater as an intrinsically delicate balance between illusion and reality. Aristophanes, Calderón, Shakespeare and Pirandello, to mention but a few, have rendered in dramatic form penetrating examinations of the relationship between theater and life. Interest in this relationship has continued to the present and has been observed and documented by numerous critics, specifically those of the theater of Alejandro Casona and José López Rubio. Referring to Casona, José Caso González has noted that "Las mejores de sus comedias unen de este modo la fantasía, la voluntad o el subconsciente (realidad interna) con la realidad externa."1 Kessel Schwartz sees the Asturian playwright as continuing in the tradition of Cervantes and Calderón by utilizing the "theme of conflict between reality and idealism or the interplay of the material and the visionary."2 A. Wallace Woolsey has clearly indicated the importance of the escape motif in Casona's works3 while Charles Leighton and Wilma Newberry have considered the kinship between Casona and Pirandello.4 Commenting on López Rubio, Marion Holt has correctly observed that ?ELIZABETH S. ROGERS has her advanced degrees from the University of Illinois, has taught at Indiana University, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Miami University. 1.José Caso González, "Fantasía y realidad en el teatro de Alejandro Casona." Archivum, Nueva serie, 5 (1955), 304. 2.Kessel Schwartz. "Reality in the Works of Alejandro Casona," Hispania, 40(1957), 57. 3.A. Wallace Woolsey, "Illusion versus Reality in Some of the Plays of Alejandro Casona," Modern Language Journal, 38 (1954), 80-84. 4.See Charles Leighton, "Alejandro Casona's 'Pirandellism'," Symposium, 17 (1963), 202-214, and Wilma Newberry, The Pirandellian Mode in Spanish Literature From Cervantes to Sastre (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1973), pp. 145-150. Also of interest are Leighton's "Alejandro Casona and the Significance of Dreams," Hispania, 45 (1962), 697-703 and the same author's "Alejandro Casona and the Revolt Against Reason," Modern Language Journal, 46 (1962), 56-61. I36VOL 34. NO 2 (SPRING 1980) Theater as Real as Life En sus mejores comedias se hace notar una predilección por el tema de la relación de la ilusión y la realidad — con sus aspectos cómicos y trágicos — y por la presentación de la vida teatralizada en un tipo de ficción dentro de la ficción.5 while Carlos Fernández Cuenca has stated that: Tal vez la característica más acusada del teatro de José López Rubio, y lo que mejor trasluce su originalidad creadora, sea la indudable maestría que conjuga los planos reales y los imaginarios.6 The purpose of this study is to examine the theme of illusion and reality in Casona's Los árboles mueren de pie (1949) and in López Rubio's La venda en los ojos (1954) in a different dimension , that of the use of theater, and more specifically role-playing, as the vehicle to perceive the relationship between illusion and reality.7 What has been labled as fantasy, illusion, and escape is often caused by or manifested in role-playing. By the use of self-conscious theatricality both dramatists emphasize the power of fantasy, the power of role-playing, as a means to conquer the negative elements of reality. Similarly, one might add that seen in the context of Lionel Abel's thesis on metatheatre, these two works might well be considered as examples of metaplays , plays which, as defined by Abel, are based on the two concepts: the world is a stage, and life is a dream.8 Metaplays are "theater pieces about life seen as already theatricalized" (p. 60), consisting of "characters who, having full self-consciousness, cannot but participate in their own dramatization" (p. 78). In these two dramas...

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