Synopses & Reviews
This collection of plays comes from one of Chiles finest voices of the voiceless: Juan Radrigán. A history marked by personal and political hardship has equipped Radrigán to tell the stories of those his nation left behind. Seven years old when his father abandoned his family, he was forced to work from an early age. As an adult, he worked as a manual laborer during a very dark time for Chile: the demise of Salvador Allende and the rise of General Augusto Pinochet. In a time of torture, exile, and political disappearances,” his plays stood as quietly powerful anti-regime statements that mourned the countrys loss. Translator Ana Elena Pugas introduction places Radrigáns work in its historical and cultural context and provides ample background for the six pieces.
The first work, Testimonies to the Deaths of Sabina, features a fruit seller who may lose her livelihood after she is accused of some mysterious infraction; but she doesnt know what she has doneif she has truly done anything. The Beasts tells the story of three sisters living in the wilderness who, fearing they have been completely abandoned, devise a means of ultimate escape. Funeral Drums for Lambs and Wolves comes in three parts: Isabel Banished in Isabel, a monologue of a woman left to go mad alone; Without Apparent Motive, a monologue by a murderer who laments the spread of violence; and the dialogue The Guest, a confrontational piece that speaks directly to the spectators, implicating them in their silent, passive tolerance of Pinochet. The title play, Radrigáns 1981 masterpiece, speaks directly to the specter of the many disappeared” victims of the military regime.
Synopsis
This collection of plays comes from one of Chile’s finest voices of the voiceless: Juan Radrigán. A history marked by personal and political hardship has equipped Radrigán to tell the stories of those his nation left behind. Seven years old when his father abandoned his family, he was forced to work from an early age. As an adult, he worked as a manual laborer during a very dark time for Chile: the demise of Salvador Allende and the rise of General Augusto Pinochet. In a time of torture, exile, and political “disappearances,” his plays stood as quietly powerful anti-regime statements that mourned the country’s loss. Translator Ana Elena Puga’s introduction places Radrigán’s work in its historical and cultural context and provides ample background for the six pieces.
About the Author
Juan Radrigán (b. 1937) is a Chilean playwright whose work explores the struggle to maintain human dignity under conditions of social and economic injustice.
Ana Elena Puga is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University. Her study of South American playwrights who resisted twentieth-century dictatorships Memory, Allegory, and Testimony in South American Theater: Upstaging Dictatorship is under contract with Routledge.
Mónica Núñez-Parra (b. 1973) is a Chilean independent scholar who studied Sociology at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. She has worked as an applied researcher in Sociology in a variety of areas including cultural sociology, marketing, and the arts.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Translator's Note
Introduction: The Missing WitnesssTestimonies to the Deaths of SabinaThe BeastsFuneral Drums for Lambs and Wolves Isabel Banished in Isabel Without Appaent Motive The Guest, or Tranquility Is PricelessFinished from the Start
Bibliography