Carlos Gorostiza Rodríguez (; June 7, 1920 – July 19, 2016) was an Argentine playwright, theatre director, and novelist. His seminal work ''El puente'' debuted in 1949 and he garnered numerous awards for his proceeding works. He later was
Secretary of Culture between 1983-86.
Early life
Carlos Gorostiza Rodríguez
was born to
Basque Argentine
Basque Argentines are Argentine citizens of Basque descent or people from Basque residing in Argentina. Basque Argentines are one of the largest Basque diaspora groups in the world.
Basque settlement in Argentina took place in the late 19th and e ...
parents in the upscale
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South Am ...
borough of
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The city is noted for its ...
. He and an older brother enjoyed a happy early childhood until, in 1926, their father, Fermín Gorostiza (among the first Argentines to receive a pilot's licence) abandoned the family.
His mother took up employment with a clothing designer, and her two sons, who entered the labour force as children, gradually recovered from the setback. In 1931, she remarried and had a daughter, María Esther, who went on to become a moderately successful actress under the pseudonym
Analía Gadé.
Career
Gorostiza's Spanish-born stepfather, a playwright, introduced Carlos to the theatre. In 1943, he debuted his first work, a
puppet show
Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a perform ...
, ''La clave encantada'' (''The enchanted key''). The show's success allowed him to open a puppet theatre, ''La Estrella Grande''. He began frequenting the Máscara Theatre, where he began a successful run as
Creon Creon may refer to:
Greek history
* Creon, the first annual eponymous archon of Athens, 682–681 BC
Greek mythology
* Creon (king of Thebes), mythological king of Thebes
* Creon (king of Corinth), father of Creusa/Glauce in Euripides' ''Medea ...
in their productions of the classic
Greek tragedy
Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy.
Greek tragedy is widely believed t ...
, ''
Antigone
In Greek mythology, Antigone ( ; Ancient Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) is the daughter of Oedipus and either his mother Jocasta or, in another variation of the myth, Euryganeia. She is a sister of Polynices, Eteocles, and Ismene.Roman, L., & Rom ...
''.
Encouraged by friends, he presented his first play at the Máscara Theatre in 1949, ''El puente'' (''The Bridge'').
Capturing the tension between different social classes in Buenos Aires, the
realist ''El puente'' drew partly on his own childhood experiences with his mother's fallen social status and secured his reputation in Buenos Aires. Produced in a professional version by director
Armando Discépolo at the prestigious Argentine Theatre, ''El puente'' was adapted into a film version, which Gorostiza directed in 1950.
Following ''El puente'' success, Gorostiza returned to theatre direction, though without the draw of spectators he had earlier enjoyed. Turning to work as a publicist for an ad agency whose chief customer was a laundry soap maker, his fame returned somewhat as a screenwriter for
Julio Saraceni's drama ''Marta Ferrari'' (1954) and when his play ''El pan de la locura'' (The bread of madness) was produced at Buenos Aires' famed
Cervantes Theatre to acclaim in 1958. The tragedy won him the coveted Municipal Prize, an award that earned him an invitation to the
Central University of Venezuela
The Central University of Venezuela ( Spanish: ''Universidad Central de Venezuela''; UCV) is a public university of Venezuela located in Caracas. It is widely held to be the highest ranking institution in the country, and it also ranks 18th in ...
Drama School in 1960, where he taught and co-wrote ''Los Caobos'' (The
mahogany
Mahogany is a straight- grained, reddish-brown timber of three tropical hardwood species of the genus ''Swietenia'', indigenous to the AmericasBridgewater, Samuel (2012). ''A Natural History of Belize: Inside the Maya Forest''. Austin: Univ ...
trees) with Juana Sujo. Returning to Argentina in 1964, he continued his academic experience as professor of drama at the
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires ( es, Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA) is a public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Established in 1821, it is the premier institution of higher learning in the country and one of the most prestigi ...
.
[ In 1966, he writes and stages the play ''The neighbors'', based on the Kitty Genovese murder from the perspective of the inactive spectators of the near buildings.
Devoting himself mostly to teaching, Gorostiza produced only two new plays in the next decade. A novel published early in 1976 (''Los cuartos oscuros'' – The voting booths) yielded him a National Grand Prize for Literature.][ This, his first novel, coincided with the military coup that would usher in the most brutal Argentine dictatorship of the 20th century; shortly thereafter, Gorostiza lost his tenure at the University of Buenos Aires. Cautious but undeterred, Gorostiza published a second novel, ''Los hermanos queridos'' (Dear brothers), in 1978. A subtle criticism of the era's climate of fear, it earned him another Municipal Grand Prize and National Grand Prize.]
A certain loosening of censorship in 1980 led his fellow playwright Osvaldo Dragún to form a partnership with Gorostiza, writer Roberto Cossa, actor Pepe Soriano and others in an Argentine Open Theatre in the hope of encouraging a further return of the freedom of expression whose absence had led so many other cultural figures to leave Argentina since 1975. Converting a shuttered spark plug
A spark plug (sometimes, in British English, a sparking plug, and, colloquially, a plug) is a device for delivering electric current from an ignition system to the combustion chamber of a spark-ignition engine to ignite the compressed fuel/air ...
factory in the Balvanera
Balvanera is a barrio or neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Origin of name and alternative names
The official name, Balvanera, is the name of the ''parroquia'' ( parish) centered around the church of ''Nuestra Señora de Balvanera'', erect ...
district of Buenos Aires to the Picadero Theatre, they premiered a festival of their collective new works (including Gorostiza's ''El acompañamiento'' – The entourage) to acclaim on July 28, 1981. This success was marred by the theatre's fire bombing a week later, still an "unsolved mystery" (the Picadero reopened in 2001).
The return to democracy imminently following the Falklands War
The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland I ...
and economic collapse at the hand of the dictators' economists, Gorostiza produced ''Killing Time'' and ''A Fire to Put Out'' in 1982, plays which earned him an Argentores Prize.[
]
Foray into politics
Elections
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated ...
called for October 1983 drew Gorostiza to a progressive UCR candidate, Raúl Alfonsín
Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín (12 March 1927 – 31 March 2009) was an Argentine lawyer and statesman who served as President of Argentina from 10 December 1983 to 8 July 1989. He was the first democratically elected president after more tha ...
. Facing a close contest with Peronist
Peronism, also called justicialism,. The Justicialist Party is the main Peronist party in Argentina, it derives its name from the concept of social justice., name=, group= is an Argentine political movement based on the ideas and legacy of ...
candidate Ítalo Lúder and with elections but three months away, the UCR nominee was given a simple slogan by the former publicist: the alliterative
Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...
''Ahora, Alfonsín!'' Facing a harried timetable and with his candidate unable to break out in the polls, Gorostiza was struck by President Reynaldo Bignone
Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone (21 January 1928 – 7 March 2018) was an Argentine general who served as President of Argentina from 1 July 1982, to 10 December 1983. In 2010, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in the kidnappin ...
's snide dismissal of the historic elections as a "democratic way out," whereby he created ads appealing for votes for "more than a democratic way out...a way into life." Alfonsín won the 1983 election by a surprising 12-point margin, carrying majorities in Lower House of Congress.
Appointed Secretary of Culture by President Alfonsín upon taking office on December 10, he rescinded the National Film Rating Entity and devoted his time to the post, helping encourage a strong recovery in the theatre
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perfor ...
and cinema of Argentina amid continuing economic malaise and budgetary scarcity. Frustrated by the post's limitations, he resigned amicably in 1986. He was replaced by Marcos Aguinis.
Later work
Gorostiza returned to writing, publishing a novella, collaborating on an acclaimed 1989 documentary of the Open Theatre and penning a nostalgic look at his brief time with his barnstorming
Barnstorming was a form of entertainment in which stunt pilots performed tricks individually or in groups that were called flying circuses. Devised to "impress people with the skill of pilots and the sturdiness of planes," it became popular in t ...
natural father, ''Aeroplanos'', which won him another Argentores Prize.[ Turning increasingly to the past, his sentimental 1994 play ''Rear Patio'' and 1999 historical novel ''Vuelan las Palomas'' (Pigeons fly) were less-well received, though Gorostiza retained his loyal following. His existentialist 2001 novel ''Good People'' was followed in 2004 by another tale of his own childhood curiosity, ''The Masked Marauder''. Gorostiza debuted his long-awaited ''El alma de papá'' (Dad's soul) in 2008. Starring Open Theatre colleague Jorge Rivera López in the title role, it continues Gorostiza's distinction as the dean of Argentine realist playwrights.
His works continued to be shown into his 90s, with four in rotation on the Buenos Aires theatre circuit in 2015. He died at the age of 96 in Buenos Aires on 19 July 2016.] A vigil was held in the Teatro Nacional Cervantes.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gorostiza, Carlos
1920 births
2016 deaths
People from Buenos Aires
Argentine people of Basque descent
Argentine dramatists and playwrights
Argentine theatre directors
Argentine male writers
University of Buenos Aires faculty
Male dramatists and playwrights