Electra Garrigó

by Virgilio Piñera

When this brazen but baffling play debuted, an esteemed director who was in the audience walked out and denounced it as a ‘spitball thrown at Olympus.’ Piñera transplants the classic Greek tragedy to modern-day Havana, where King Agamemnon becomes a beer-guzzling bourgeois patriarch, the Chorus sings its verses to the tune of ‘Guatanamera,’ and the faithful servant of Sophocles’s tragedy is a Tutor—no normal man but a centaur who urges his apt pupil Electra to ‘stop making speeches and make a Revolution instead.’In the words of its quixotic author, Electra Garrigó is a modern drama for a nation that is ‘tragic and comic at the same time.’

336 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2014

About the author

Virgilio Piñera Llera was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and essayist.
Among his most famous poems are "La isla en peso" (1943), and "La gran puta" (1960). He was a member of the "Origenes" literary group, although he often differed with the conservative views of the group. In the late 1950s he co-founded the literary journal Ciclón. Following a long exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Piñera returned to Cuba in 1958, months before Fidel Castro took power.
His work includes essays on literature and literary criticism, several collections of short stories compiled under the title of Cold Tales, a great number of dramatic works, and three novels: La carne de René (Rene's Flesh), Presiones y Diamantes (Pressures and Diamonds), and Las pequeñas maniobras (Small manoeuvres). His work is seen today as a model by new generations of Cuban and Latin American writers. Some believe that his work influenced that of Reinaldo Arenas, who wrote in his memoir Before Night Falls of Piñera's time in Argentina and friendship there with Witold Gombrowicz.
The magazine Unión posthumously published autobiographical writing by Piñera in which he discussed how he concluded he was gay. However, his work can not be reduced to his open discussions on homosexuality in a time when such a topic was taboo, especially in the Spanish Caribbean. Piñera's literary and cultural perspective went beyond sexuality, to express concerns on national and continental identity, philosophical approaches to theater, writing and politics. This focus drew fire from the Spanish American literary establishment of his time, including Cuban poets Cintio Vitier and Roberto Fernandez Retamar, and leaders like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
Due to Piñera's social points of view and especially to his homosexuality, he was censured by the revolution, and died without any official recognition. As more of his work has been translated into English, Piñera's work has been rediscovered by American academia as a testimony of 20th century resistance against totalitarian systems.

Reviews

[María · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es una excelente, muy pasional y revolucionaria reescritura del mito de la Orestíada, donde el motivo predominante es Electra y donde la importancia reside en que los hijos tengan manos propias y los padres, hasta ahora reyes, partan de la casa.

[marcela]

Esta es la "primera" de las obras que estoy leyendo como reescrituras de mito. No entendí mucho, no voy a mentir. Necesité un poquitín de guía externa para poder leer, pero ya era muy tarde. Cuenta el mito de los Atridas pero situándolo en una familia medio burguesa cubana en la primera mitad del siglo pasado, tergiversando a los personajes y sus relaciones por influencia del psicoanálisis. Toda referencia a Esquilo, muy a mi pesar, no la capté realmente cuando leía. Lo que sí recuerdo era la alusión constante a la realidad cubana y la inclusión de nuestras frases, juegos de palabras o formas de tratar. La disfruté principalmente por eso, por la cercanía. Volveré a leerla.

[Anapanini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una buena elección como primer contacto con el teatro hispanoamericano (cubano) del siglo XX. Me ha gustado bastante, aunque el final me ha dejado el c*lo torcío. Puedo sacarle un par de lecturas, pero su ambigüedad (me) desentona con el resto de la obra.

[Encarni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entiendo la intención y no niego que tiene puntos muy originales y divertidos, pero a mi no es una lectura que me vaya a trascender. No está mal, pero siento que hay mejores obras de teatro cubano y latinoamericano que me ofrecen algo más.

[jemamese · Rating 4 out of 5]

deberes pero bastante más entretenido k la griega

[ale · Rating 2 out of 5]

El teatro de lo absurdo no es para mi

[Guillermo Estrada · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me encanta Piñera, sobre todo sus cuentos, y esperaba mucho de esta obra; tal vez por lo mismo me decepcionó un poco. Me resultó un tanto solemne, grandilocuente, además de que parece copiarle demasiado a la tragedia existencialista del tipo Sartre y Camus. De igual forma tiene grandes monólogos, y el asesinato de Clitenmenstra es genial.