Cuba Inside Out: Revolution and Contemporary Theatre by Yael Prizant (review)

In Cuba, since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, all aspects of life have been intrinsically tied to the revolutionary process, a concept that Yael Prizant explores in the context of the turn of the century and the crises that emerged in and around Cuba and Cuban politics. Cuba Inside Out: Revolution and Contemporary Theatre examines the definition of Revolution through theatre in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent severe economic crisis that this provoked in the 1990s and beyond, known as the Special Period in Times of Peace.

Prizant’s Cuba Inside Out is divided into five chapters. The first, “Overture: Cuba and the Evolution of Revolution,” is an introduction that presents a history of Cuba in the twentieth century, interspersed with an account of Cuban theatre from the days of the Taínos. While she does omit some details (such as Fidel Castro’s use of the press—an interesting point within the context of performance studies), Prizant presents a thorough historical background of the political and theatrical context that she will explore in subsequent chapters.

The next three chapters are dedicated to the theatre of a certain region or time period and engage in a close reading of two related plays. Chapter two, “Staging Revolutions: Past and Present Conversations,” analyzes the definition of revolution within the Cuban context by returning to the French Revolution and to Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade. As Prizant points out, this was the play that the Revolutionary forces in Cuba promoted as an appropriate artistic endeavor and is the subject of two Cuban plays of the early twenty-first century. Both of these plays, following Weiss’s example, exploit various layers of meaning, in Prizant’s effective analysis.

Chapter three, “Revolution under Siege: Theatre, Globalization, and the Special Period,” returns to the era of the 1990s and early 2000s with an analysis of two plays written within and about the Special Period and its effects on human relationships. Chapter four, “Revolution from Afar: Cuban American Perspectives,” turns to the diaspora to explore two Cuban-American playwrights and their consideration of exile. Finally, chapter five, “Para siempre: Staging the Future” takes advantage of a well-known saying associated with the Cuban Revolution to look ahead and speculate on what will happen in the years to come. Prizant begins this projection with an analysis of the play Traidor by Reynaldo Arenas (1986), which considers a transition from Castroism.

Yael Prizant’s intended audience is clearly those who study the theatre history of Cuba, as her bibliography lacks certain literary and critical readings on Cuba and Latin America. Furthermore, those who study Latin American literature may wish for a closer reading of the texts. However, scholars of Cuban cultural studies and history can benefit from her analyses and presentation of key plays from the context of Cuba at the turn of the century. Prizant’s work serves as a valuable contribution to the analysis of the theatrical, social, and political context of island of Cuba at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first.