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‘I would like to, I would like to...cut the cord.’
First performed in 1967, this is an early, yet startling, brilliant work by the internationally acclaimed Argentine playwright Griselda Gambaro. In this absurd and forceful play, two brothers carry out a primal scene of envy, cruelty and torture. Ignacio wants to break free of his brother and move out of their shared house, but Lorenzo has other plans. Through a series of dark comedic scenes the absurd becomes a harrowing metaphor of the most pure and raw reality.
Griselda Gambaro is one of Argentina's foremost dramatists. She was born in Buenos Aires in 1928 into a family of second-generation Italian immigrants. She began writing at the age of 24 but it was in her mid-thirties that she suddenly started to enjoy great recognition and success as a writer. In the early 1960s, Gambaro became involved with the avant-garde arts foundation the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella where she staged a series of four plays: Las paredes (The Walls) (1964), El desatino (The Blunder) (1965), Los siameses (The Siamese Twins) (1967) and El campo (The Camp) (1971). This began her international success which has continued to the present day. Her most recent production was El don at the Teatro Cervantes in 2015. Though her theatre takes the form of many varied aesthetic expressions, on some level Gambaro is always probing the nature of power, our conscience, and theatricality itself.
Translated by
Dr Gwen MacKeith is a published literary translator, writer and editor. Her expertise lies in translating theatre texts for performance, specifically the plays of internationally acclaimed Argentine dramatist, Griselda Gambaro (1928-). She worked on the creation of the Out of the Wings theatre in translation project between 2008 and 2012 and continues to be a member of this creative collective, https://ootwfestival.com.
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