Luchting, Wolfgang A.

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SPRING 1982 59 The Usual and Some Better Shows: Peruvian Theatre in 1981 Wolfgang A. Luchting Of the inevitable year-end roundups (like this one), 1981's most publicized one, in Latin America, was that of the sur-les-lieux offices of the Agence France Presse. It stated that what characterized 1981 was "the unusual prefer-ence for local authors and themes, a more numerous audience and better quality of the works presented," and, this notwithstanding, "the pertinacious cosmopolitanism of certain theaters traditionally devoted to the 'classical' genre" (El observador [inter alia], Lima, 12/29/81). The AFP-survey men-tions as the most interesting productions Ultimo round by Venezuelan Rodolfo Santana, La señorita de Tacna by Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, Don Elias Campeón by Argentina's Hebe Serebrisky, and La mar estaba se-rena, an obra colectiva by the Chilean group ICTUS. As for the Peruvian theatre in 1981, the social, literary and gossip- sensa-tion was the production (Ana Blutrach y Asoc.) of La señorita de Tacna (text available from Seix Barrai, Barcelona, 2nd ed. May, 1981, from which I quote infra). It is a rather perplexing play, seeing who wrote it, in that it com-bines very skillfully Vargas Llosa's confessed love for melodrama and trucu-lencia (here a pretty mild and domestic one, very close to the execrable Latin American or US telenovelística — the author's very premeditated attack against the prevalence of huachaferia in South America by "giving them what they crave"?) and his superb techniques in handling time, space, and mem-ory. As a text, the play requires a study apart. The production, in Osvaldo Cattone's Teatro Marsano, was incredibly successful and, clearly, proved the (secret?) point I think Vargas Llosa wished to make. Those putting on the play were an Argentinian group, which before had had a resounding success with it in Buenos Aires (Premio Anual de la Crítica).1 Director was Emilio Al-faro, Mamaé, the principal figure, was Norma Aleandro, a very good actress. The mise-en-scene was interesting (though often distracting by too much go-ing on all over the stage), the acting somewhat uneven. For understandable 60 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW reasons, the text's references to its own melodramatic essence were cut. For in-stance, this one: "Ah, Belisario, y eso es lo que tú criticabas tanto en los escri-tores regionalistas: el color local y la truculencia" (p. 106), which glosses Vargas Llosa's theory of the novel. Being in Lima, the troupe emphasized all the telenovela -aspects (or, if you prefer, the memories a spectator may have carried into the theatre of Pedro Camacho's radionovela-chapters in Vargas Llosa's La tía Julia y el escribi-dor): "la mujer mala" came out in a red dress; the "indiecita de Camaná," played by Argentine-German, tall, blonde, and most seductive Katja Ale-mann, who also did "la mujer mala," had to writhe naked on a table, before the "good guy," Abuelo (Leal Rey), got to "know" her and actually to main-tain, in a letter to his wife confessing the sinful congress, that "Fue pensando en ti, ávido de ti" (p. 135). The oddest aspect of the production was that the stand-in for Vargas Llosa, Belisario, played unconvincingly by Chilean Franklin Caicedo, in all seriousness had to show us how a writer writes: with a pencil and throwing away lots of sheets. It was like the composers in early Hol-lywood pictures composing right there on the screen: la, la, la, li — no! lo, etc.). Belisario's desk was placed upstage center. When from time to time he runs to renew his memories and, therefore, materials for writing, he actually, like a lamb, crouches at the feet of Mamaé, position a reader of the play would surely consider one of the author's jokes. In the text, he'll also find this: " . . . deja de escribir un momento para besar la mano y el lápiz con los que está escribiendo" (p. 40). Still, the production was professional and up to the standards Argentine actor, director, and producer Osvaldo Cattone has intro-duced to Perú. The audience raved the night I was there, the last of the run, and indeed stood up to applaud this well-earned satisfaction of its most inti-mate and bourgeois visions of the world. Vargas Llosa must have been laugh-ing daily on his way to the bank. Not surprisingly, according to the newspa-pers, Venezuela is to make a telenovela of the play: 52 shows! Critic-director Jorge Chiarella Krüger announced recently that Vargas Llosa is planning to write a farce, "whereupon the nation will be able to consider the consecrated writer to have been definitely won for our theatre" (Comercio,. Dominical, 12/27/82). In the auditorium of the Asociación Nacional de Escritores y Artistas (ANEA), the excellent and original playwright César Vega Herrera organized the first public reading of plays by their authors between June 11 and Novem-ber 15. A second cycle has begun in January 1982. Vega Herrera: "Readers were Gregor Díaz, Juan Rivera Saavedra, José Schul, Estela Luna, Áureo So-telo, Delfina Paredes, Jorge Días Herrera, Carmen de Navarro, Hernando Cortez, Alberto Mego, José Adolph, Marcos Leclère, Sara Yoffré, César de María, Filiberto Ramírez, Magda Portal, Carlos Clavo, Herman Herman, all with unpublished plays . . . . The next round will present Edgardo de Habich, Porfirio Meneses, Felipe Buendía, Víctor Zavala, Pedro Benavides, César Vega Herrera, and especially invited people like Sergio Arrau who, while not Peruvian, writes about topics of interest to us because he has lived many years in Perú" (Chiarella Krüger, interview, Comercio, Dominical, 11/22/81). Asked how the public responded, Vega Herrera stated: "It was the public that saved us. In the beginning there was fear of a failure because of SPRING 1982 61 lack of audiences, and to be on the safe side we invited directors, actors, tech-nicians, etc. But in the end it was the common and run-of-the-mill public which accompanied us in the readings." As for the existence of a common de-nominator in the plays read, Vega H. said: ". . . all manifest an almost active vocation of denouncing, being witness to, and questioning the problems of this part of the world. . . . All show a rejection of a state of affairs that op-presses man" and "that is why the tone of the readings, of the authors' texts, is sad, tends to melancholy. . . . And also ironical or realist in the extreme . . . even by way of the absurd or the joke, most of them come together in, return to, sadness." Finally, Vega H. commented: "It is notorious that there is an ab-sence of joyous and dynamic works, mine included. Our theater is serious. Perhaps too serious. It lacks laughter," and complained that "nobody or al-most nobody sees to it that Peruvian works are put on. . . . All authors agree that there are no occasions for a Peruvian playwright to see his work on the stage, except with groups . . . like Cocolido, Yuyachkani, Los Grillos, Noso-tros and now Alondra." Possibly, Vega Herrera was exaggerating a bit here, for his interviewer, in his own year-end roundup, states: "As far as authors are concerned, it's pleas-ant to see in the lists of plays ever more of our own playwrights. Rivera Saave-dra [an uncommonly productive writer: he has at least 100 plays to his name today] turned out to be the most produced author with his works Por qué la vaca tiene los ojos tristes? (Escuela Nacional de Arte Dramático), Deshojando la margarita (Cía. Teddy Guzman), Alberto el bueno (Grupo Elecho), El gran tú (La silla), El crédito (Teatro Universitario Villareal), and Amén?, col-lectively created with the Grupo Alondra" (Com., Dom., 12/27/81). He con-tinues: "On the other hand, Gregor Diaz with his El hombre que vendía globos, produced by the Teatro Universitario San Marcos and the group Ex-presión, is the playwright who has remained on the cartelera the longest time. Finally, Victor Zavala is the one who has been the most-produced nation-wide." Other Peruvian authors produced were Aureo Sotelo, Julio Ortega, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Filiberto Ramírez, Sebastián Salazar Bondy, and the classics Leónidas Yerovi and Segura. Looking at the ever more fashionable collective creations, Chiarella Krüger lists: Los hijos de Sandino (Yuyachkani), Lucia, Manuel y un viejo cuento (Telba), and Oh, menaje a los poetas (Cuatrota-blas). As the most successful production, the critic mentions La divina come-dia by Rafael León and Nicolás Yerovi: "Strictly speaking, [the play] does not reach theatrical quality, but, produced by the Grupo de Teatro Monos y Mo-nadas [a satirical weekly, since defunct], it turned into a hit, for from begin-ning to end, over three months, it always had a full house" (ibid.). In August 1981, there took place in Cerro de Pasco (14362 ft.) the VIII Muestra de Teatro Peruano, in which participated 23 surely breathless groups from all over Perú. The next Muestra is to be in Tacna. Thereafter, it is to be a biannual affair, alternating with regional muestras. Among books and revistas, there were, besides Vargas Llosa's play, Atus-paria by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, an historical drama published by Rickchay Peru (with an introduction by the poet Washington Delgado that contains some of the most erroneous comments imaginable); Veinte años de criticas te-62 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW aírales by Alfonso La Torre (fifth volume of Teatro Peruano edited by Los Grillos); Juegos dramáticos para educación inicial y básica regular by Ernesto Ráez (Centro Cultural Nosotros), as well as La fiebre de oro and La fábula de los ricos by Víctor Zavala, and Roger Deldime's El niño en el teatro (transí. Sara Yoffré; Belgian Embassy in Perú). Ediciones Yuyachkani started the pe-riodical Documentos de teatro; the Club de Teatro of the ANEA of Arequipa published two more numbers of Revista Teatro; Alberto Mego further two numbers of Cuadernos de teatro. Peruvians or their works abroad were invited by diverse organizations, Alonso Alegría, whose El cruce sobre el Niágara was put on in Washington, D.C. (Folger's Theatre, in English) and in Buenos Aires; Elvira Travesi (France), Osvaldo Cattone's company (on an unsuccessful tour in the USA), the critics Jean Rottmann (Argentina) and Alfonso La Torre (USA); the group Cuatrotablas (Venezuela and México), J. Chiarella Krüger (USA), Al-berto Isola (Italy and Venezuela) as well as the Grupo de Teatro del Sol (more than a year in Europe and the Americas, according to the newspapers). The Yuyachkani-group has been invited to the "Horizonte '82 Festival" in Berlin (5/29-6/20/82). Foreign visitors in Perú were Ñola Rae (Britain), the Japa-nese Puppet Theatre, the Actors' Touring Company (London), and the Ar-gentine company that put on the play by Vargas Llosa. There is one new theatre in Lima, the Teatro Larco in the Avenida of the same name in Miraflores, a sala opened thanks to the private initiative of Adi-nar and Jaime López Lozano and at this writing showing "El gran deschave" with Orlando Sacha and his wife Elvira de la Puente. In contrast, Chiarella Krüger writes (and most critics said the same): "There is no doubt that the lack of a cultural policy on the part of the State — and a theatrical one on that of the Instituto Nacional de Cultura [at present unàer the direction of Luis Enrique Tord] — is one of the worst hindrances for Peruvian artists. . . . There is no help, no theatres are being built, there are no competitions, there are no workshops . . ., the Teatro Nacional Popular is doing nothing, and the theatre La Cabana has been in repair for over a year." He adds: "The only subsidy that the Government has conceded (and outside the INC's budget) went to the Club de Teatro de Lima, thanks to the initiative and the connec-tions of that organization. With the money, the Club has begun an alfabetiza-ción teatral creating teatros pilotos in all districts of Lima and Callao and starting a vast promotional plan, which must be supported by all means" (Com. D., 12/27/81). Director of the CTL is Reynaldo d'Amore. The year 1981 was one oí conmemoraciones in Perú: the centenary of Le-ónidas Yerovi's birth (whose complete works still have not been published); the tricentenary of Calderón de la Barca; the twenty-fifth year after Brecht's death, for which occasion the very active Grillos organized a retrospective ex-hibition; the ANEA became 35 years old; the Grupo Histrión celebrated its golden anniversary; the Teatro de la Universidad Católica twenty years, Yuyachkani ten, as did Lola Vilar's troupe. A long number of actors and ac-tresses looked back on 25 years on Peruvian stages. Three died in 1981: old-timer Lucho Córdoba (who lived mainly in Chile, coming to Lima from time to time), Carmen Escardó, and Haydée Orihuela. SPRING 1982 63 Jean Rottmann, theatre critic of La Prensa, in an extensive roundup under the title "Una temporada poco memorable" (1/1/82) , writes this about the tendencies discernible in 1981: "The [economic] crisis has not allowed im-portant works to be undertaken," wherefore "plays whose production costs lit-tle were the remedy." He mentions a smaller number oí estrenos in 1981 than the year before: "in this newspaper we published approximately 50 reviews of works of all types, and this year only 26." As each year, the critic then goes on to list the best puestas en escena (coinciding in his choice with most of the other critics that can be taken seriously): (1) Las aventuras del soldado Shveik en la Segunda Guerra Mundial by Brecht in a very imaginative production di-rected by Alberto Isola [Cocolido; Isola is one of the most talented Peruvian directors of recent years]; (2) La divina comedia [Cocolido; cf. supra]; (3) Amén? by the new group, Alondra, directed by Chiarella Kriiger, a collective creation of the group and the playwright J. Rivera Saavedra; (4) celebrating the International Year of the Physically Handicapped, Osvaldo Cattone gave us Mark Medoffs Hijos de un Dios menor [Teatro Marsano]; (5) El gran des-chave [Teatro Larco; cf. supra]." When leaving Lima, the following plays were en cartelera: Papito Piernas Largas, Acapulco Madame (Yvesjamaique), Amén?, La orgía (E. Buenaven-tura), Se necesita marido (Andrés Verstein), Revolución en América del Sur (A. Boal), El marido humillado (Moliere), Si me permiten hablar (Domitila Chungara's testimony), Teatro clásico (anthology), and La corbata. Washington State University Notes 1. I translate from the program notes, "Críticas de La señorita de Tacna en Buenos Aires: "La Nación: Talent and sensibility in a fascinating work. Exceptional production by Emilio Al-iara with a dazzling Norma Aleandro. Escenario: One of the noblest and most remarkable spec-tacles I have been called to see in thirty years of reviewing. El Día: T h e theatrical event of the year. Diario Popular: A deafening ovation for the trio Vargas Llosa-Aleandro-Alfaro. Somos: The audience went wild and applauded standing, tears from Vargas Llosa. Humor: La señorita de Tacna soars and explodes as an homage to the Theat re . El cronista: T h e most important spec-tacle of major quality that today can be found on the playbill. El Territorio: Total success of the work by Vargas Llosa. Criterio: The world premiere of La señorita de Tacna received an excep-tional response. Clarín: A great night for the Latin American theatre. Convicción: La señorita de Tacna is a spectacle of rare quality. T h e audience was ten minutes on its feet. La Razón: Vargas Llosa incorporates himself into the Thea t re with all the attributes of a great creator." 

The Usual and Some Better Shows: Peruvian Theatre in 1981

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The Usual and Some Better Shows: Peruvian Theatre in 1981

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