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SUMMARY:Revolutionizing Greek Tragedy in Cuba -  Dr Rosa Andújar\, UCL
DTSTART:20150305T171500Z
DTEND:20150305T184500Z
UID:TALK57432@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:39489
DESCRIPTION:The twentieth century was a formative period for the adaptatio
 n of Greek drama in Latin America. Throughout the century Latin American d
 ramatists repeatedly engaged with their classical forebears in order to in
 terrogate and debate new political\, social and religious paradigms. In th
 is paper I examine some of the region's most innovative adaptations of Gre
 ek tragedy: Virgilio Piñera's Electra Garrigó\, José Triana's Medea in 
 the Mirror (Medea en el espejo)\, and Antón Arrufat's Seven Against Thebe
 s (Los siete contra Tebas)\, plays which were written and staged in Cuba i
 n the years immediately before and after the Revolution. Greek tragedy had
  a unique and brief flourishing in the island as writers began to appropri
 ate and reform ancient dramatic texts for the new Communist Cuba. I discus
 s the ways in which these Cuban dramatists with varying degrees of success
  make use of Greek Tragedy as a medium for political and social expression
 \, and in particular how two of these plays (Electra and Medea) garnered g
 eneral acclaim for the manner in which they created hybrid and semi-comic 
 adaptations that cleverly blended Cuban and classical in order to celebrat
 e a specific Cuban experience\, in a process best described by the anthrop
 ological term transculturation. My paper will then examine Antón Arrufat'
 s explosive 1968 adaptation of Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes\, which\, d
 espite being the most faithful to its Greek source text\, was the most con
 troversial of the three. Arrufat chose to deviate from the successful hybr
 id and transcultural model of classical reception that was espoused by his
  predecessors\, and instead\, sought a more original and faithful way of p
 resenting the ancient source text\, creating a serious drama that in his o
 wn words did not 'hide from the text of Aeschylus but rather sank itself i
 n it'. Despite winning the prestigious 'José Antonio Ramos' prize from t
 he Cuban writers' and artists' guild (UNEAC)\, the play\, with its unique 
 focus on politics and violence rather than the 'safer' social themes of El
 ectra and Medea\, was immediately banned on the grounds that it was 'count
 errevolutionary'\, and Arrufat\, once the darling of the Havana literary a
 nd theatrical scene\, was banished to work alone in the basement of a muni
 cipal library where he tied boxes of books with rope for the next two deca
 des. As I argue\, these Cuban examples offer a valuable insight into the p
 otential of —and especially the limits of — ancient classical drama to
  address fraught political and social realities in the modern world. 
LOCATION:Classics Faculty\, Room G.21
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