Mario Trejo and Griselda Gámbaro: Two Voices of the Argentine Experimental Theater

Author(s): Virginia R. Foster

Source: Books Abroad, Autumn, 1968, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Autumn, 1968), pp. 534-535
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40122853
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
.facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Books Abroad

This content downloaded from

128.122.149.92 on Tue, 20 May 2025 13:11:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
534 BOOKS ABROAD

Prize) justifiably crowned. Samarakis has also spectators must take the responsibility of
received the Greek National Book Award for either participating by condemning the ideo-
his stories; his writings are record-setting best logical issues at stake or of being found guilty
sellers at home, constantly reprinted, im- themselves. The firstplay is a vigorous de-
mensely popular with the general public, the nunciation and indictment of totalitarianism
youth, and the academic intelligentsia. At a in general, while the second intensely speaks
time when, as never before, the reading pub- out against a particular kind of totalitarian-
lic is united by the "media" while it is being
ism, Nazi or fascist. The scenes depicted by
split into watertight compartments when it
comes to books- a segregation by age, genre, Trejo are enervating, often violent and gro-
old versus new, metaphysics versus politics, tesque. However, the author is rather opti-
mistic in spite of such gloom, for he believes
-
history versus fiction Samarakis is excep- the lone and suffering individual will be
tional in that, against the current, he has
helped by his fellow man (as seen in the
bridged the generation gap and the culture second play). Not only is Trejo a radical
gap as well. Several of his stories have been who believes in drama as a social act, but he
published with much success outside Greece. subscribes as well to the aesthetic that drama
They have even been included in textbooks. is an outgrowth of ancient religious ritual.
In book form, Samarakis' work has come out His recent plays combine a strange mixture of
in German, Danish, and Norwegian. "The austere ceremony (actors carry burning in-
Flaw" is about to be published in England cense up and down the aisles of the darkened
and the United States, and to be followed by
theater, chanting prayers), brutal realism
French, English, German, Italian, Danish,
(torture scenes), and poetry. Trejo is es-
Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Czechoslovakian, sentially an exponent of the "theater of ef-
Hungarian, Spanish, Hebrew, and other trans- fects" in that he attempts to create a total
lations of this and earlier works. Critic Dedo- theater by means of action, sound, and visual
poulos writing on Samarakis says: "Only when technique. Scenery and costuming are under-
the work of art belongs to its country and its
played, allowing a freer interpretation of
time does it transcend its country and its time and place, while dramatic use of alter-
time." This, the work of Samarakis does-
nating light-darkness (projection of lights on
brilliantly. University of Illinois dark walls) is emphasized throughout the
Mario Trejo and Griselda Gdmbaro: performance. Songs, noise, instrumental
music, even smells are reproduced in an elec-
Two Voices of the Argentine tric atmosphere which complements the sig-
Experimental Theater nificant happenings of his political and so-
By Virginia R. Foster cial themes. A compact theater and a small
The most exciting activity or the present-day audience encourage the uninhibited and im-
experimental theater in Argentina is to be provised spontaneity of the actors. Any lan-
found at the Instituto Torcuato Di Telia, a guage, depending on the nationality of the
foundation formed in 1958 to patronize the actor, is spoken on stage. As a director, Trejo
fine arts and foster sociological investigations. demands people on the stage, not actors;
Di Telia is essentially a theatrical laboratory therefore, he works to make people out of his
where young writers may experiment with actors, choosing a spontaneous, natural pre-
technique, theme, and representation, adapt- sentation, while opposing stylization of any
ing audiovisual phenomena to the stage. Al- type. Thus, he prefers to work with young
though the center has been wrongly accused people who are not actors. As a prolific and
of snobbism, spectacle, and lack of commit- ambitious writer (his first play, No hay pie-
ment, it has contributed to the promotion of dad para Hamlet, an experiment in the the-
experimental literary currents as well as to ater of the absurd in collaboration with Al-
the discovery and introduction of new authors berto Vanasco, won awards in 1957), Trejo
and their works. Among these, two drama- promises two major works for the next sea-
tists are outstanding: Mario Trejo and Gri- son. One is still in the abstract stage and
selda Gambaro. explores the thoughts and actions of an ex-
Mario Trejo, forty-year-old poet, play- treme rightist; the play is to be so fascist that
wright, and director, is an interesting per- the public will either reject or accept the
sonality who has presented two inquisitions ideology. The second play, the half-written La
on the stage, Libertad y otras intoxicaciones conversadora, is an hour-and-a-half dialogue
and Libertad y mas intoxicaciones. Both between two women who talk about any sub-
works given in 1967 represent the "living ject, even the intimate matters of sex life.
theater" and are politically committed. The Trejo feels that the Argentine audience per

This content downloaded from

128.122.149.92 on Tue, 20 May 2025 13:11:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 TREJO AND GAMBARO 535

se is not fully mature; he sees the need for ideological frustrations, anxieties, loss of in-
an intelligent and understanding audience, nocence, and many doubts regarding society
alert to the dialogue that allows the artist to and the new generation. The staging of Los
relate to the present, the past, or the future. siameses is familiar and definite: the family
Trejo, indeed, is a promising and vital figure home, the jail, and finally the cemetery.
on the contemporary Argentine drama scene, Events therefore have rhythm and progres-
whose work will be interesting to follow. sion. Most effective is Gambaro's conception
Griselda Gambaro is the other new voice of life as a purgatory; like Beckett, she be-
in the Argentine theater whose dramas have lieves this is not a living world. One of the
brought an international accent to the stage. most dramatic and intense moments of the
The young playwright has successfully drawn drama is*Lorenzo's long walk to the ceme-
from the intellectual, coldly clinical, and pes- tery to bury Ignacio; this is really Everyman's
simistic theater of Ionesco and Beckett. And descent into the hell/purgatory of life as he
from Kafka she produces precise and metic- seeks to be cleansed of the sin of existence
ulous interpretations of the real world with and redeemed from his
nightmarish, wild situations which thwart frustration. Such a
her characters. These characters try desper- strong commentary re-
ately to solve the riddles of life, only to be veals Gambaro as a
hopelessly frustrated and trapped by the in- gifted writer, sensitive
ternal/external unfathomable forces. Gam- to the theater of the ab-
baro's theater basically partakes of existential- stract as well as to the
ism and the theater of the absurd; she is pre- tenor of life at the mo-
occupied with man as an individual who seeks ment.
freedom from both himself and society. Fol- Phoenix College
lowing the existential ethic, she focuses on a
few major characters, studies the individual Oreste Macri: The Critic as a Writer
profoundly, and underplays the temporal and
physical setting. Up to the present moment, By M. Ricciardelli
Gambaro has evaded the immediate Argen-
Organized by the novelist A. Bonsanti, a
tine reality and culture (e.g., the rejection of
singular panel discussion took place at the
the popular, regional voseo) in favor of an Vieusseux in Florence on February 21, 1968.
absolute concern for universal man. From an The major exponents of the Third Genera-
aesthetic point of view, her dramas advance
tion, M. Luzi, P. Bigongiari, A. Parronchi,
the theory of complete freedom in dramatic A. Gatto, presided over by Oreste Macri, par-
craftsmanship and stage direction. Such are ticipated in the panel for a "Balance of Her-
the structural-thematic considerations of her meticism." Among the well-known poets was
earlier and well-received dramas Las paredes, Carlo Bo, present as a panelist, who thirty
El desatino, Viejo matrimonio, and of her
years before had written "Letteratura come
fourth and maturest work, Los siameses, out- vita" {Frontespizio, September, 1938), the
standing success of the 1967 season. manifesto of hermeticism. The panelists
Los siameses speaks convincingly to the brought back to life their early experiences
contemporary audience in its elaboration of under the difficult Fascist regime, their ef-
the Cain-Abel parable within the framework forts and their poetical aspiration and struggle
of modern man's schizophrenia. The work is to create what Macri calls: "a categorical and
a cold requiem for the spirit of good and heroic poetry, its place in the contemporary
evil in which the latter triumphantly annihi- world and its incoercible voice of truth."
lates the good and the weak; written in two This unusual meeting was certainly a trib-
acts and blending a noisy and often chaotic ute to Macri, the untiring defender, codifier,
dialogue with touches of black humor and and structuralist of hermeticism; to his almost
mythic symbolism, Los siameses are two thirty years of critical writings collected in
brothers, heirs to loneliness and fear, who are the volume, which was just coming off the
bound figuratively as they once were physical- press, Realta del simbolo (Firenze, Vallecchi,
ly. Sadistic Lorenzo plots diabolically against 1968, 646 pp.). Some weeks later, C. Bo,
ingenuous Ignacio; these characters represent writing of the meeting and the book, succinct-
the two poles of human existence, perhaps the ly defined Realta del simbolo as the "summa
total personality of man. Gambaro drama- of hermeticism."
tizes the tragedy of man's anguish and the In order to better understand and properly
futility of hope by means of a dialectic in- evaluate Macri's long critical research con-
terplay in which the two brothers synthesize tained in Realta del simbolo, as well as in

This content downloaded from

128.122.149.92 on Tue, 20 May 2025 13:11:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms