Cuban Theater Digital Archive

Adaptation / Version (Spanish)

Notes:

"Pájaros de la playa." Tablas 3 (2004): VI-VIII. (Libreto 66)

"Pájaros de la playa." El ciervo encantado: textos de la memoria. La Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2012, 99-110.

Additional Research Sources:

“El estampido de la vacuidad”, Escrito sobre un cuerpo, “Poesía bajo programa”, Maitreya, “Un testigo perenne y delatado”, “Para una biografía pulverizada en el número, que espero no póstumo”, Severo Sarduy

“Isla”, Virgilio Piñera

“Subida al Monte Carmelo”, San Juan de la Cruz

Los Inmortales, Jorge Luis Borges

Del sentimiento trágico de la vida de los hombres y los pueblos, Miguel de Unamuno

Ensayo sobre el cansancio, de Peter Handke

“El travestismo como transculturación en tres novelas de Severo Sarduy”, Alan West

“Para una arqueología de Pájaros de la playa”, Francisco Javier H

Dioses en el desempleo, Joseph M. Villagrasa

The following is part of an interview where the director Nelda Castillo explains how she adapted elements of Severo Sarduy’s writing to her theatrical adaptation.

Q. Understanding the non-traditional writing of Sarduy, with this I am referring to the neobarroque style, what were the difficulties in adapting this literary aspect to the theatre? Were Sarduy’s theories with respect to his neobarroque style of writing somehow applied in some form to the theatrical presentation?

A. Without looking for a style, our investigation of Cuban identity- not in the formal but in the more essential profundity- led us to “meet” (and or presented us) with Severo Sarduy’s work, and for us it was a tremendous discovery and a marvelous coincidence. His language is tremendously close to ours; artificial but yet profoundly organic, directly directed more to the senses than to the intellect. What is most important is not the meaning of the words but more so its appeal to the senses, its absolute synthesis; the disinterest for a fable or to recount a chronological articulate history; the constant metamorphosis of its characters. Another coincidence that our group has with Sarduy is our eagerness and want to paint with words the importance that we give to the impact of the image, where the sound included in the text, the actor’s body, the costume, objects and other elements, to arrive to a sculpture in movement. And lastly, one of the other more important points that our work has in common with Sarduy is the fundamental objective in achieving the Cuban stylization. Up to here, some of these elements, in some general form answer your question.