Soledad Ruíz about Oscar Liera . Homage to Oscar Liera at Foro Luces de Bohemia. (1997)

Soledad Ruíz during his talk about Oscar Liera. (Gustavo Thomas © 1997)

I apologize to my English speaking followers, this is a video only in Spanish. Soledad Ruíz, the Mexican teacher and stage director, talks about Mexican playwright Oscar Liera during the homage realized in 1997 at Foro Luces de Bohemia in Mexico City.

Soledad Ruíz sobre Oscar Liera:

Soledad Ruíz: sobre Oscar Liera (1997) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Henrik Ibsen advices to a young writer.

Laura Petersen (Later Laura Kieler)

 
In 1870 he was not at the peak of his career but he was already famous and a controversial writer, a good poet and was on his way to becoming an European personality; around his 40s Henrik Ibsen could receive letters with texts of new born writers, especially women writers.
Laura Petersen, a Norwegian young writer, published a kind of sequel to Ibsen’s poetic play Brand entitled Brand’s Daughters. Michael Meyer, Ibsen’s biographer, depicts this text as “an imaginary sequel (...) an emotional contribution to the debate on women’s rights”. Today we recognize Ibsen as a 19th century champion for women rights (thanks to some of his plays of maturity), but in that time, around 1870, that wasn't a very easy subject for him.  In fact, he wasn't a very open minded man about that: when he was younger and living in Italy he asked for the expulsion of some members of the Scandinavian Club in Rome who let their wives enter to the club (reserved only for men) without being noticed; and years later he used to have some lively debates with Camilla Collet, a Norwegian novelist recognized by her fighting for women rights; Collet, following Meyer’s text “... was scandalized by what she regarded as an old fashioned man about ideas on women’s place in society”.

So, when Laura Petersen sent to him her Brand’s Daughters asking for advice, one could only expect the letter would be ignored or at least rejected in a polite way.  But no, something happened to Ibsen when young women writers approached to him asking for advice.  Suddenly, the gentleman surged from him,  and a patient and kind wise man always replied. Thanks to that attitude towards young women artists we can now read a document with some advices, coming from his own hand, directed to a young writer.
Letter to Laura Petersen (June 11, 1870):
"Are you thinking of continuing to write? (…) Much more is needed than mere talent. One must have something to create from, some genuine experience. If one lacks that, one doesn't write in the true sense, one just makes books (…) Intellectually, man is a long-sighted animal; we see most clearly from a distance; details distract; one must remove oneself from what one wishes to judge; one describes the summer best on a winter's day (…) The main thing is to be true and faithful to oneself. It is not question of willing to go in this direction or that, but of willing what one absolutely must, because one is oneself and cannot be otherwise. The rest is only lies." (*) 

Laura Petersen never went out from Ibsen's life, both were linked for ever; she married later and her name changed to Laura Kieler, and a terrible real anecdote with her husband was Ibsen's inspiration for A Doll's House; Nora Hellmer was modeled on this young lady who was thinking on women rights since her adolescence.

Ibsen, with the honesty and wisdom his letter shows, was not only a good mentor to Laura Petersen but a prophet of his own future way to work.


 





 

(*) Henrik Ibsen Biography. By Michael Meyer. Page 320.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Ibsen, the anarchist, speaks about Freedom

Here a very short quotation from an Ibsen’s letter to Georg Brandes (1872) where the Norwegian poet complain about the misconception around his texts over his idea of freedom. The text shows an Ibsen much more closer to Anarchism than to any liberal believes:

"I shall never agree to identify Freedom with political freedom. What you call Freedom I call freedoms, and what I call the battle for Freedom is nothing but the continuous pursuit of the idea of Freedom. He who possesses Freedom otherwise than as something to be striven for possesses something dead and meaningless, for by its very definition Freedom perpetually expands as one seeks to embrace it, that if, during the quest, anyone stops and says: "Now I have it!" he shows thereby that he has lost it." (...) "The state must be abolished!" (...) "There's a revolution to which I gladly lend my shoulder. Abolish the conception of the state, establish the principle of free will and all that is spiritually akin to it as the one prerequisite for a universal brotherhood-there is the beginning of a Freedom that is worth something!" (*)

Of course, a text that didn’t help to change the general idea that Ibsen was an ultra radical in the political ambience in the end of European 19th century.

*Ibsen Biography. By Michael Meyer. page 338.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Ibsen at War: "My book is poetry; and if isn't, it will become such."

Ibsen's original draft of Peer Gynt. Act V. (Photo from H. Ibsen Biography by Michael Meyer.)

After the publication of Peer Gynt in 1867, in his motherland, Ibsen was attacked as no other author before, attacked because of his style of poetry, his subjects and his strange idea of theatricality (even when Peer Gynt wasn’t conceived for the stage). But that wasn’t the Ibsen of some years before, immature and choleric, who didn’t know how to reply any attack; Italy, the exile and the success of his “Brand” had given to him a self-assurance that nobody in Norway could brake in the future.

After Peer Gynt was published Henrik Ibsen has become a monster.

The next is an extract of a letter to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (December 9, 1867) as a reply of all those critics:

"Dear Bjørnson, (…) My book is poetry; and if isn't, it will become such. The conception of poetry in our country, in Norway, shall shape itself according to this book. (…) However, I am glad that this injustice has been flung at me; it is sign of divine aid and dispensation; anger increases my strength. If there is to be war, then let there be war! If I am not a poet, what I have to lose? I shall try my hand as a photographer, I shall deal with my contemporaries up there, each and all of them, one by one, as I have dealt with these language reformers; I shall no spare the child in its mother's womb, nor any thought nor feeling that may have motivated the actions of any man who shall merit the honor go being my victim. (…) Do you know that all my life I have turned my back on my parents, on my whole family, because I could not bear to continue a relationship based on imperfect understanding?"(1)

Ibsen is capable to assure that his own text would become in Norway the concept of poetry itself (and it was almost true), and it wasn’t what his critics called errors and mistakes. Who can assure that?

He knew he was at war if he wanted to be the most recognized author in Norway, and that famous sentence about photography that many of us are used to identify as Ibsen’s start in Realism became his chant of battle: “I shall deal with my contemporaries up there, each and all of them, one by one, as I have dealt with these language reformers; I shall no spare the child in its mother's womb, nor any thought nor feeling that may have motivated the actions of any man who shall merit the honor go being my victim.”

We only have to recall his most important plays to see that those words were accomplished.

Ibsen also made a very hard confession about turning his back to his parents and family; coming from a very provincial background, with no intellectual or artistic links, all his relatives were mere obstacles in his way to fame as a writer (since his adolescence he never saw any of them again). Only a man with all his goals in mind, ready to fight any battle to be the number one in his world could write in that manner.

He wanted it, he fought for it and he got it. He was monster.

(1) Ibsen Biography. By Michael Meyer. Double Day, 1967.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Ibsen and the Beauty of Rome. Understanding Greek Tragedy and Art.

Detail of Tragic Muse Statute at Vatican Museum

Ibsen like many other Scandinavian and European artists from the 19th century, found in Rome the inspiration for their art and their idea of beauty and depth in art. Reading Michael Meyer’s Biography of Henrik Ibsen I discovered a letter to his friend (and sometimes enemy) the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, describing his favorites pieces of art in the eternal city and his reaction after observing them.

Ibsen lived in Rome during his 30s in a kind of auto-imposed exile, and wrote several of his most famous plays during those years in Italy. Being known that he wasn’t used to read books (any kind of, he only read newspapers) this stay was for him more than a general view of the classical art world, it was the visual reading of all the classics in literature and theatre through sculpture and architecture. Yes, as odd as it sounds.

Ibsen sent this letter to Bjørnson (dated January 28, 1864) confirming Bjørnson’s predictions that the playwright's stay in Rome would gradually become attuned to classical art and sculpture.

I’m posting the whole extract of the letter from Meyer’s book and also some photographs (from different sources on internet) that’ll help visualize those works Ibsen is talking about.


"Its beauty (…) grows more and more on me, as you said it would. It comes in flashes, but a single flash throws light over whole vistas. Do you remember the "Tragic Muse" which stands outside the hall in the Rotunda in the Vatican? No sculpture here has yet been such a revelation to me. I may even say that it is through this that I have understood what Greek tragedy was. The indescribably calm, noble and exalted joy in the expression of the face, the richly laurel led head containing within it something supernaturally luxuriant and bacchantic, the eyes that look both inwards and at the same time through and far beyond the object of their gaze--such was Greek tragedy."

Tragic Muse (Vatican Museum)

“The statue of Demosthenes in the Lateran, the Faun in the Villa Borghese, and the Faun (of Praxiteles) in the Vatican (brachia nuovo), have also opened great windows for me into Greek character, and have enabled me to understand what imperishability in beauty really is. Pray heaven I may be able to use this understanding for my own work."

Demosthenes Statue (Vatican Museum)

Praxiteles' Faun (Vatican)

Faun (Villa Borghese)

"Michelangelo's Moses in S. Pietro in Vincoli I had not seen when I last wrote to you; but I had read about it and built up expectation which has not quite been fulfilled--however. I have only seen it once.

How glorious the landscape is down here; in both forms and colours there is and indescribable harmony. I often spend half the day lying out among the graves on the Via Latina or the old Via Appia, and think it an idleness but no waste of time. Caracalla's Baths are another place which holds some especial attraction for me (…)"

Graves at Via Appia

Caracalla's Baths

Maybe is only a curious information but maybe it could help to understand in a better way the work of this playwright and poet, and to better understand the man behind that work.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"Buy a dog, my lord"

Just a simple Ibsen's dialogue quotation from The Pretenders (circa 1863) which show, in my point of view, that ironic Ibsen of his later years. Even without thinking about the great author who wrote it, this is a charming point:

"Skule- (…) I must have someone by me who will obey me instinctively, believe in me unflinchingly, stand close by me through good days and evil, live only to give light and warmth to my life--someone who, when I fall, must die! What shall I do, Jatgeir?

Jatgeir- Buy a dog, my lord."*

* The Pretenders by Ibsen. From Michael Meyer's Ibsen's Biography. Double Day, 1967. Page 210.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson critic of the young Henrik Ibsen

The young Henrik Ibsen (1861)

The young Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1860)

 The young Ibsen was insecure, choleric and with a remarkable physical ugliness (at least in the point of view of many of his contemporaries), his personality was worthless for many, as Olev Arvesen writes about him when used to see him "entering L'Orsa's café punctually at two o'clock each afternoon to drink coffee and read the foreign newspapers", around 1858:

"That this man with the threadbare coat, old, soft mormon hat and profoundly unassuming mien would become one of Norway's and Scandinavia's greatest men was an unimaginable thought." (Michael Meyer, Ibsen's Biography)

But at the same time Ibsen owned a great talent for poetry, liked (and could) to write theatre and had the dream-ambition of being the greatest writer of Norway.

But around 1859, at 31, and in the beginning of his life as a playwright, theatre director and poet, he has not succeeded at all. That was the moment of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who was the head of Norwegian young writers, tall, handsome and economically successful artist; it was him who Ibsen wanted to dethrone. The first fights (Ibsen’s attacks to Bjørnson) were charged of misunderstandings, jealousy and suppositions that only were in detriment of Ibsen himself. Yes, the greatest realist writer didn’t have yet that superb personality and speech what would characterize his last years of fame, a man full of cold wisdom.

After a small scandal with Ibsen’s piece The Viking of Helgeland, Bjørnson wrote a letter to Clemens Petersen elaborating a big description of the ambiance around Ibsen and a strong critic to him. It is curious for us today the remarkable tone of power as a writer and artist Bjørnson shows in that letter, more if we think of Bjørnson’s comments at the end of his life, all totally charged with bitterness and envy for Ibsen.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson letter to Clemens Petersen. Bergen, 5 March, 1859:

"The play (The Vikings at Helgeland) hasn't succeeded, though it may seem from a distance to have (…) Ibsen has a little clique of admirers headed by Nyhedsbladet. But every time he has to face the general public everything goes wrong and I've had to go to his aid twice, because Ibsen despite his aberrations is a poet. And I hope some day to get him to be himself and turn away from all this damned pastiche. The day Ibsen admits he is small he'll become a perfectly enchanting poet. I've told him as much pretty plainly, but the result is, he's jealous. He's done all sort of little things to annoy me, and does still. He's angry that I haven't put The Vikings at Helgeland into my repertory. (…) I haven't read his poem 'Gull Cry'; I've heard it's rather affected stuff, and was written largely because Danish monthly said he was lesser writer than me. Now that's exactly the kind of thing that always distracts Ibsen from what he ought to be and do. The point is, he's rather small and gnomish little chap, with no chest or rump, so he feels that as he has no other gifts he has to strain most frightfully when he writes. And so he doesn't write what he'd really like to, and could." (*)


These are very harsh words, but most of them could be the truth, that was the young insecure and sometimes stupid Ibsen; but what a terrible game for Bjørnson because they now only talk to us ironically about his fall and his wrong appreciation of an ambitious man, who “despites his aberration” could become not only the greatest poet and playwright of Norway but one of the greatest of the history of the world.

 

* Ibsen Biography. By Michael Meyer. Double Day, 1967. Page 161.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Eleonora Duse watching Ibsen's window...

"La Duse watching Ibsen's window" (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

She was there when he was dying

but couldn't see him,

couldn't kiss him,

nor thanking him.

She was there, just waiting for him to appear

but he never did

She was there, just looking and waiting,

they say...

"Duse was visiting Norway for the first time, largely in the hope of meeting the dramatist who had provided her with her greatest triumphs. On her arrival she sent a letter and flowers to Ibsen asking if she might call merely to say "¨Thank you". Suzannah, however, telephoned that Ibsen was too ill to receive anyone. Lugné-Poe, who was with Duse at the time, tell what followed

I remember very well that morning when she had just received this sad message. I went in to her and found her swathed in the long white paladrane which she loved to wear. She sat fearful, annihilated, hollow-cheeked, her face tired and lined as though life was abandoning her. She asked me: "What shall I do? Please, what shall I do?"... What could I do for her? I had hoped so much, for her sake... Next morning, around noon Duse and i found ourselves outside Henrik Ibsen's house. She had bought Norwegian boots, for she wished to go there on foot. We walked round the left of the palace, and at the stroke of twelve we stood beneath the corner window, where, every day at this time, people could see Dr. Ibsen in person, sometimes with a secretary or someone at his side. Duse stood there waiting, in the cold and snow. Who, even thirty years later, would not be shaken by the memory of having been present at that sad and silent meeting? Eleonora Duse on the pavement, looking for the old poet's silhouette behind the big window."

Ibsen's Biography. By Michael Meyer.

My painting is based in a original photograph of Eleonora Duse taken for the production of Ibsen's play The Lady from the Sea.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Teaching without pupils... A poem from the Brechtian's exile.

Brecht during his exile in Denmark. Seated close to him, Hellen Weigel.

Sometimes life outside your country and your artistic field seems unbearable, sometimes is only a melancholic sentiment of emptiness and impotence.

These poems (quoted by Hans Burger) were written by Brecht during his exile in Denmark:

 "Teaching without pupils/

Writing without fame/

Are difficult."

"There speaks the man to whom no one is listening:/ 

He speaks too loud / 

He repeats himself / 

He says thing that are wrong: 

/ He goes uncorrected."

Marguerite Duras... L'Amant de la Chine du Nord.

This is an English version from the original in Spanish (Tadeo Berjon corrected the text).

I knew that at some point in my life I would read it again and several more times, that I would need her rhythm and her vague (due to its being ephemeral) understanding of love, that to read in her language would enjoy her more, feel her more and even cry with her.

Marguerite Duras came to me over 20 years ago when I had not even found anyone to love. She was only "L'Amant", and some theatre and movies. I read, listened and watched with her and her huge and hideous face, her amphibious body and the chaos of her numerous books, the only thing that surprised me was all that confidence at the time when she would wrote obsessively to us; then, her deformed eyes became sharp, and they would be forever enshrined in my memory, Duras was only her eyes and themes for me.

I could not understand how what everybody considered a great literature and a great person in my eyes and my ears was just that image of obsession, of ugliness and of persistence in writing.

I found her again in an airplane, in the darkness of a 14 hour flight and in a continuous 2009 New Year's night. As I read her "L'Amant de la Chine du Nord", Duras's words got mixed with those that had read more than 20 years ago, when I had not loved anyone, when I was in love only with theater, my body and my future. So, with memories from those years and from my readings, I had to stop my reading, so many books were being read at the same time in my head! again the mirror of the past emerged and at 40 years of age it brazenly opened before me. I see myself in every word I read, in every word I repeat, I admire the writing for what time has done to me.


I remembered that staging of the play "Agatha" at school, in which I did not take part, but which I watched attentively. It was the time when I was discovering the Tchekhovian Naturalism of Gonzalez Caballero, the acting technique of haikus and internal pain, of confusion and of immense love for acting, of tears that spoke of love and loneliness. That Agatha... I admired the director and the group, my friends, and I was in love with their work, perhaps even with them, I don't know I was young. The perceived depth of their dialogue was so shallow did not feel the texts of Duras (I trusted in those texts so little!), I could not perceive the emotional gulf of the incestuous relationship, of the insolence and pain of not being able to love yourself anymore. I tried to approach the director, who was as young as me, and share my theatre and its achievements. I talked with him, gave him "my secret", the Japanese poems that led me to feel what I knew was lacking in their staging of the play, and a charming smile thanked me.

I knew then that to read Duras or to see her on stage or on screen required help, required a big past, a technique, a viewer with history, and not young people who dream of creating... Including me with my experiences and "my secrets".

That assistance was futile, I was not taken into account, the work didn't even make it to the premiere, the group dispersed and the theater stopped being a part of their lives ... I remember with sadness how that beautiful stage director died little by little, being just as young as I was, and what I watched him meditating under a storm, I learned that the plague that terrified our sex lives in the eighties had covered him and was defeating him. Agatha kept inside me added to that terrible image of a young dying and shaping my past.

Therefore Duras was also imprinted in my theatrical life, she embedded herself subtly with a memory of death, impotence, and who knows, perhaps also of love and desolation.

As many of us lost track of one another, she become just another name, literature from other people. Until that long night at the plane over the sea, where it all came back. Thoughts. Did I have to to be living in China to know her again? Did I have to lose myself in troubled relationships to recognize that what she talked about was loving (in ignorance) a stranger ?

The lovers recognize cultural differences, incestuous siblings recognize social differences ... We all love each other in the impossibility of being whole. Chinese words heard from other place burst my memory: we Westerners are no more than hookers in search of freedom, chaos, incest, insanity, ambition and money, we love the freedom that has led us to degeneration! While they, in their overwhelming hypocrisy of centuries, must follow their traditions, appear wise, and never lose face; why give up life and joy at the expense of love, which is stupid?

Reading Duras again, 20 years after, brings me laughter, sarcasm, and pain. The eternal disgrace of her Chinese lover is a victory for the little French whore from the west ... Those words are worth more than a life of respect in a stale and putrid society and they end in a telephone call saying that "he has always loved her."

I have had to touch Chinese hands, their skin and their powerlessness; I've had to breathe the suffocating heat of northern China, of Indochina and Siam, and immerse myself in all the rivers that cross them. I have had to hate and get to know about cultural, social, racial differences... To know the powerlessness of loving until due to cultural differences, and just then, to only live to write about them.

I went back to reading the lovers, her Agatha too, I bought her books, her works, I watched her movies, I thought about them and about her, I looked again at her amphibious face and past of vice and communism. She is not my goddess nor my theater nor my literature, but she is a bit of my understanding of love and cultures.

I knew the final piece that were written about that first love should be the best, because it was the one she would write after having talked about everything, about what was well known ... When there were no more anecdotes to talk about, you would have to talk about what is essential, to clean the truth and tell it with the simplicity the narrative images, which is not poetry in itself and yet is so close to it that it surpasses poetry when poetry lets down its guard. That's "L'Amant de la Chine du Nord".

I knew that at some point in my life I'd have to read her once again and several more times; that I would need, as I need water, that I would need her rhythm and her vague (due to its being ephemeral) understanding of love, that by reading her in her own language I would enjoy her more, feel her more and even cry with her. I knew that being a writer now I could alsom relive her.

Now that I close my eyes and her books, I enjoy a phantasmal feeling. I've found a very short and long-lasting response to a haiku, and enjoy it, and I rest.

Perhaps one would not read Duras more than twice in a lifetime.

I received an e-mail from Luis Alejandro Simon, director of the Club de Teatro "Barbara Simon" informing that, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Inter-American Development Bank (the institution that owns the club) promotes a drama contest in Spanish and English. Here is the text that he sent to me (in Spanish the original):

El Club de Teatro "Bárbara Simon" de la Asociación de Empleados del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) festeja el Cincuenta Aniversario de esta Institución con el lanzamiento del "Concurso Hispanoamericano de Dramaturgia".

Este evento reparte entre sus ganadores, US$ 17.000 en efectivo más un impactante paquete de premios especiales.
Les invito a leer las bases del concurso en nuestra página web: www.teatrobid.org

Adjunto al presente el afiche del Concurso, agradeciendo sinceramente su difusión.
Su gestión será de vital importancia para acercar esta convocatoria a los dramaturgos chinos o a los dramaturgos hispanoamericanos que viven en China. Esperamos que esta propuesta sirva de estímulo para abrirles el camino a una carrera internacional y les brinde nuevas oportunidades de desarrollo artístico.

( ... )

Le agradezco por anticipado ayudarnos a difundir nuestro Concurso en China.

Atentamente,
Luis Alejandro Simón
Director General
Club de Teatro"Bárbara Simon"
Asociación de Empleados del BID
1300 New York Ave. N.W Washington, D.C 20577 - USA "


I visited the site, www.teatrobid.org (everyone can access to it), copied part of the main text and posted it here (also in Spanish the original):

Concurso Hispanoamericano de Dramaturgia

En Celebración del

Cincuenta Aniversario del BID

El Club de Teatro “Bárbara Simon” de la Asociación de Empleados del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), convoca a los autores teatrales a participar del Concurso Hispanoamericano de Dramaturgia en celebración del Cincuenta Aniversario del BID. La Asociación de Empleados del BID es un organismo representativo de los empleados, que entre otras finalidades, promueve el bienestar de los empleados a través de actividades sociales, culturales, de deportes o recreacionales.

Los dramaturgos contemporáneos hispanoamericanos tienen por delante un arduo camino para convencer a los teatros de la posibilidad de estrenar sus piezas teatrales y es aquí donde los concursos literarios desempeñan un papel fundamental: avalar la calidad de un dramaturgo y abrir así una oportunidad que eventualmente impulsará su carrera artística. El público tendrá entonces la última palabra y decidirá el destino de su obra, mediante su aceptación o su rechazo. Pero para llegar a abrir el telón, los concursos constituyen en nuestros días una gran puerta que conduce a un dramaturgo al escenario.

Para participar de este concurso los autores podrán escoger una de las siguientes categorías:

1. Gran Comedia Hispanoamericana para un mínimo de siete personajes (Escrita en español)
2. Hispanos en USA, but sin estereotipos (Escrita en español, inglés o spanglish).
3. Teatro Infantil (Escrita en español)

Podrán participar del Concurso los ciudadanos nativos o extranjeros que cuenten con más de cinco años de residencia comprobable en cualquiera de los países miembros del BID:

Alemania, Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Bélgica, Belice, Bolivia, Brasil, Canadá, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croacia, Dinamarca, Ecuador, El Salvador, Eslovenia, España, Estados Unidos, Finlandia, Francia, Guatemala, Guyana, Haití, Holanda, Honduras, Israel, Italia, Jamaica, Japón, México, Nicaragua, Noruega, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Portugal, Reino Unido, República de Corea, República Dominicana, República Popular de China, Suecia, Suiza, Suriname, Trinidad y Tobago, Uruguay y Venezuela.

Las obras presentadas no tendrán limitaciones de propuestas estéticas y deberán ser originales (no adaptaciones), inéditas, no estrenadas, no haber sido premiadas anteriormente, ni escenificadas con anterioridad en ningún país, ni tampoco podrán estar participando en procesos de selección de ningún otro concurso durante el periodo de tiempo comprendido desde el comienzo de la fase de selección hasta el fallo de premiación de este concurso.

El jurado seleccionará 4 ganadores por categoría otorgando premios por la cantidad total de US$ 17.000 en efectivo que se suman al siguiente paquete de premios especiales:

1. El Club de Teatro “Bárbara Simon” representará la obra ganadora de la categoría “Gran Comedia Hispanoamericana para un mínimo de siete personajes” en el Auditorio Enrique Iglesias (EVI) del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) en Washington, D.C., durante su temporada teatral 2010/2011.
2. El ganador del primer premio de la categoría “Gran Comedia Hispanoamericana para un mínimo de siete personajes” viajará a Washington, D.C. con los gastos de viaje y alojamiento pagados para estar presente en el estreno mundial de su obra.
3. El Club de Teatro “Bárbara Simon” publicará en 2011 una selección de las 10 mejores obras del Concurso (ver detalles en Bases). La publicación será posteriormente distribuida a teatros y bibliotecas de Hispanoamérica que determine el Club de Teatro.
4. El Thalia Spanish Theatre (Nueva York) representará la obra ganadora de la categoría "Hispanos en USA but sin estereotipos" en Estreno Mundial en producción bilingüe durante su temporada teatral 2010/2011.
5. La Sociedad Educativa de las Artes Inc., SEA (Nueva York) seleccionará una de las obras ganadoras de la categoría “Teatro Infantil” para ser representada durante su temporada teatral 2010/2011.
6. El Teatro GALA, a través de su programa infantil GALITA (Washington, D.C.) seleccionará una de las obras ganadoras de la categoría “Teatro Infantil” para ser representada durante su temporada teatral 2010/2011.

La convocatoria se abrirá el 1 de abril de 2009 y concluirá el 1 de septiembre de 2009.

Las obras deberán enviarse, por duplicado a:

Luis Simón
Director Ejecutivo
Concurso Hispanoamericano de Dramaturgia
Asociación de Empleados del BID
1350 New York Ave. N.W – Stop B-0670
Washington D.C. – 20577 -USA

Auspician este concurso: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID); Asociación de Empleados del BID; Asociación de Familias del BID; Centro Español de Washington, D.C.; Embajada de España en Estados Unidos; Embajada de Venezuela en Estados Unidos; Embajada de Uruguay en Estados Unidos; Telemundo; Centro Dramático Nacional (Ministerio de Cultura, España); Thalia Spanish Theatre; Teatro GALA y la Sociedad Educativa de las Artes Inc. (SEA) y el Ministerio de Cultura de Guatemala.
Solo serán aceptadas aquellas obras que cumplan todos los requisitos detallados en las bases del Concurso.

Bases:
Documento en Español (PDF)

Convocatoria:
Abr 1 - Sep 1

Enviar Obras a:
Luis Simón
Director Ejecutivo
Concurso Hispanoamericano de Dramaturgia
Asociación de Empleados del BID
1350 New York Ave NW
Stop B-0670
Washington, DC 20577
USA

Consultas:
Ana Nuchowich
Productora General
Correo: teatrobid@iadb.org
No se aceptarán consultas telefónicas de ningún tipo, ni se recibirán obras enviadas por correo electrónico.