Poesía en Voz Alta

Poetry aloud

Translation: Roni Unger, Silvia Peláez

Review Rodolfo Obregón


UNAM-Dirección General de Publicaciones y Fomento Editorial / CONACULTA / INBA-CITRU
México, 2006
222 p.

Colección Teatro



The translation to Spanish and the current publication of Poetry Aloud, by Roni Unger, makes available to scholars of Mexican theater a research that merges the rigor of academic work —it was presented as a doctoral thesis for the City University of New York in 1978, and after that updated and published by the University of Missouri in 1981— with the freshness of a chronicle following the stage history of the group, taking as a starting point testimonials by most of the writers and artists who gave life to it, among them Octavio Paz and Juan José Arreola, as literary directors; Héctor Mendoza and José Luis Ibáñez, as stage directors; Juan Soriano and Leonora Carrington as stage and costume designers; Tara Parra, Carlos Fernández, Rosenda Monteros and Nancy Cárdenas, young actors by then. The study gathers information recreating the creative processes of the stagings. It describes and illustrates the ensembles and analyzes the reviews generated by the shows that each one of the eight Poetry Aloud programs presented between 1956 and 1963. As a complementary thematic item, Unger talks about the transcendence and influence of this “unique and fascinating adventure”, of this movement that experienced turning poetry into theater and explored to the edge the poetics of pure theatricality in the future generations of directors, playwrights and actors of Mexican theater. The critic setting includes references to oral and written interviews; reviews, critiques and comments, unpublished documents and conferences, works, poems and collections; iconographic material such as photographs and programs, as well as a bibliography and a log of periodical publishing of general and specialized reference