Selected Plays by Griselda Gambaro: Siamese Twins; Mother by Trade; As the Dream Dictates; Asking Too Much; Persistence; Dear Ibsen, I Am Nora; The Gi

Griselda Gambaro is arguably Argentina’s foremost dramatist and playwright, whose poetics not only interpret Argentine reality but transcend cultural and geographical borders. Popular across Latin America and Europe, her plays lack recognition in the UK due to the lack of English translations - a problem that this welcome anthology solves.

Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982, Gambaro has produced work from the 1960s through to the 1990s, which this collection chronicles. As radical and endlessly playful as they are inventive, Gambaro’s plays make searing comments on domestic and political issues: an experience which may not be comfortable but is always vital. Dazzling, original, incisive and poetic; no one made theatre like Griselda Gambaro.

Siamese Twins (1967)
In this absurd and forceful play, two brothers (one weak, one strong) play out a primal scene of envy, cruelty and torture as one exerts his power and aggression over the other.

Mother by Trade(1997)
A mother meets her daughter forty years after she abandoned her as an infant; the daughter, in turn, discovers the mother cohabiting with her lesbian partner of twenty-five years. Melodrama ensues.

As the Dream Dictates (1999)
How can we look to the future if there is great trauma in our past? In this play, only the untethered thinking that comes with dreaming can deliver that immense freedom.

Asking Too Much (2001)
In this deeply poetic play, love is just a memory... and with all the messiness, the hiatuses, contradictions and traps which memory brings, can love exist at all?

Persistence(2004)
Based on the 2004 Beslan massacre in Russia, three Chechnyan rebels take children hostage, tackling the difficult contradictions found in Islamic Terrorism.

Dear Ibsen, I Am Nora (2012)
Nora, the character created by Henrik Ibsen in A Doll’s House, decides to confront her own creator and to debate with him his words and actions. In doing so, she becomes the author of her own identity, whilst making the playwright into a character.

The Gift(2015)
Márgara is a woman with the gift of prophecy... but people do not believe her, even though she predicts hope for the world. Will humanity be able to hear her?

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.

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.