{"id":100,"date":"2016-01-31T15:50:26","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T15:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/?p=100"},"modified":"2023-03-19T21:25:35","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T21:25:35","slug":"ionesco-translated-by-octavio-paz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/ionesco-translated-by-octavio-paz\/","title":{"rendered":"Ionesco Translated by Octavio Paz"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rodolfo Obreg\u00f3n<\/b>*<\/a><\/p>\n

\"1241551350\"<\/p>\n

Traduit la premi\u00e8re fois par Octavio Paz en 1956, Ionesco a \u00e9t\u00e9 une pr\u00e9sence constante au th\u00e9\u00e2tre mexicain. Ses pi\u00e8ces ont r\u00e9sonn\u00e9 sur la sensibilit\u00e9 macabre du public, ont fait une fort influence sur quelques auteurs oppos\u00e9s au r\u00e9alisme dominant, et, dans les mises en sc\u00e8ne de Juan Jos\u00e9 Gurrola et Alexandro Jodorowski, parmi d\u2019autres, ont ouvert un chemin pour l\u2019exp\u00e9rimentation sur la sc\u00e8ne mexicaine.<\/i><\/p>\n

Nobel Prize winner, Octavio Paz, had an enormous influence on every aspect of Mexican culture. Even though he had only one brief contact with the theatre there, he exerted an intense influence on modern Mexican stages through his artistic direction of the second, third and fourth programs given by <\/i>the Poesia en Voz Alta<\/i>[1]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1956, shortly after returning from France\u2014where he had joined the Andr\u00e9 Breton circle\u2014Paz selected and translated into Spanish, specially for Mexican audiences, three short plays, by three\u2014at that time unknown\u2014 playwrights: Jean Tardieu, Georges Neveux and Eug\u00e8ne Ionesco (Le salon de l\u2019automobile<\/i>). He completed the program with his first and last attempt to write for the theatre: La hija de Rapaccini<\/i>. The program notes were written by a most distinguished Mexican writer: Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928).<\/p>\n

\n
\"Rodolfo
Rodolfo el sal\u00f3n del automovil 01<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The importance of his own attempt seems <\/b>not to have attracted the critics\u2019 attention to an author who, ultimately, has proven to be a continuous presence from that time on in the Mexican theatre: Eug\u00e8ne Ionesco. Nevertheless, it was a young actor from Poesia en Voz Alta<\/i> who staged here for the first time one of Ionesco\u2019s favourite plays: La cantatrice chauve. <\/i>The 1960 production by Juan Jos\u00e9 Gurrola assured the success of the published Spanish version, which was sold out in a very short time.<\/p>\n

That same year, three other Ionesco plays were staged in Mexico City: Am\u00e9d\u00e9e, La le\u00e7on <\/i>and Les chaises<\/i>. The latter two were produced by Chilean director Alexandro Jodorowski, who had stayed in Mexico after a tournn\u00e9e <\/i>with Marcel Marceau\u2019s mime company, and had continued to produce other Ionesco, Fernando Arrabal and Samuel Beckett\u2019s plays until the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Rodolfo
Rodolfo el sal\u00f3n del automovil 02<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Thus, when Ionesco arrived in 1968 in Mexico as part of the Olympic Games Cultural Program, he was already a well-known dramatist. He lectured and travelled around, accompanied by the French productions of three other plays presented by Jacques Mauclair\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

From then on, Ionesco was a constant presence on Mexican stages and a strong influence on those Mexican playwrights who had seemed\u2014until then\u2014to be strongly committed to the realistic canon. After all, his preference for macabre situations suited quite well the Mexican sensibility and its humor about the proximity of death.<\/p>\n

But Ionesco\u2019s dramatic discovery of language deprived of sense also opened the way to scenic experimentation through directors such as Jodorowski, Gurrola and other participants and heirs to Poesia en Voz Alta<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\n

Endnote<\/b><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>[1] Poesia en Voz Alta<\/i> (1956-1963) was a gathering of poets, painters and very young theatre practitioners that represents\u2014in my opinion\u2014the arrival of Meyerhold’s reforms on Mexican stages. Its developments have been registered by American scholar Roni Unger (Poesia en Voz Alta in the Theatre of Mexico,<\/i> University of Missouri Press, 1981).<\/p>\n

\n

\"1241551350\"<\/p>\n

<\/a>* Rodolfo Obreg\u00f3n<\/b> is a theatre director and critic, as well as a teacher of acting. He has published three books relating Mexican theatre to world theatre. He has been, since 2003, Director of the National Centre for Theatre Research in Mexico.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2009 Rodolfo Obreg\u00f3n
\nCritical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This work is licensed under the
\nCreative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rodolfo Obreg\u00f3n* Traduit la premi\u00e8re fois par Octavio Paz en 1956, Ionesco a \u00e9t\u00e9 une pr\u00e9sence constante au th\u00e9\u00e2tre mexicain. Ses pi\u00e8ces ont r\u00e9sonn\u00e9 sur la sensibilit\u00e9 macabre du public, ont fait une fort influence sur quelques auteurs oppos\u00e9s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theatre-legacy","","tg-column-two"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/01\/1241551350.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7d79A-1C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":766,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}