Memories of Plays and a Playwright: Antonio Buero Vallejo

Abstract

The author tells the story of his involvement with the playwright. It began with four productions of plays by Buero, between 1966 and 1973, at the University of Manchester, correspondence about them, and a first encounter in Chester in 1968. But as the dramatist's works became a major topic of the academic's teaching and research, their relationship developed, via further meetings in Madrid and frequent exchanges of letters and cards (several extracts from which are reproduced), into a close and productive friendship, that was to last until—and after—Buero's death in April 2000.

Key words:

• Antonio Buero Vallejo
• El concierto de San Ovidio
• Historia de una escalera
• En la ardiente oscuridad
• stage directions
• immersion effects
• tragedy
• obituary

Notes

1 James Whiston, Antonio Machado's Writings and the Spanish Civil War, Hispanic Studies TRAC (Textual Research and Criticism) 10 (Liverpool: Liverpool U. P., 1996).

2 For Derek Gagen, see the memoir by David George, ‘Derek Henry Gagen (1938–2013)’, BSS, XCI:4 (2014), 621–26.

3 Especially because this play centres on torture by the police, it could not be performed in Spain until after the death of Franco. When it premiered in Madrid on 29 January 1976, ‘it enjoyed considerable success and ran for over six hundred performances’; see Catherine O’Leary, The Theatre of Antonio Buero Vallejo: Ideology, Politics and Censorship (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2005), 81–84, 203–04 (p. 204).

4 That apartment, in which he would spend the rest of his life, was described by him in detail in 1990; see ‘La casa en el tiempo’, in Antonio Buero Vallejo, Obra completa, ed. de Luis Iglesias Feijoo & Mariano de Paco, 2 vols (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1994), II, 310–15. This volume contains Buero's poems and his non-dramatic works in prose. Volume I contains an Introduction, a chronology of Buero's life and works, and a detailed bibliography, plus all his thirty works for the stage, except the two he produced later, Las trampas del azar and Misión al pueblo desierto.

5 Buero Vallejo, ‘Comentario de En la ardiente oscuridad’, in Obra completa, ed. Iglesias Feijoo & Paco, II, 331–38 (p. 331).

6 See Victor Dixon, ‘Pintar de otra manera: Art in the Life and Work of Antonio Buero Vallejo’, Estreno, 27:1 (2001), 13–21.

7 Buero Vallejo, ‘Coloquios sobre mi teatro’ [1987] and ‘Coloquios sobre mi teatro’ [1989], in Obra completa, ed. Iglesias Feijoo & Paco, II, 539–48 & 553–68 (pp. 564–65).

8 See Ricardo Doménech, El teatro de Buero Vallejo: una meditación española (Madrid: Gredos, 1973), 49–51; Victor Dixon, ‘The “Immersion-Effect” in the Plays of Antonio Buero Vallejo’, in Themes in Drama 2: Drama and Mimesis, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1980), 113–37; reprinted in Estudios sobre Buero Vallejo, ed. Mariano de Paco (Murcia: Univ. de Murcia, 1984), 159–83 (p. 160).

9 See the monumental study of all Buero's plays up to and including Jueces en la noche (1979) by Luis Iglesias Feijoo, La trayectoria dramática de Antonio Buero Vallejo (Santiago de Compostela: Univ. de Santiago de Compostela, 1982), especially pp. 518–24.

10 Dixon, ‘The “Immersion-Effect” in the Plays of Antonio Buero Vallejo’; see also Dixon, ‘Los efectos de inmersión en el teatro de Buero Vallejo: una puesta al día’, in A. Buero Vallejo: la tragedia, transparencia y cristal de la palabra, Anthropos, 79, Extraordinario 10 (1987), 31–36.

11 Victor Dixon, ‘H. G. Wells en la vida y en la obra de Antonio Buero Vallejo’, in Antonio Buero Vallejo: literatura y filosofía, ed. Ana María Leyva (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1998), 145–64.

12 Victor Dixon, ‘La “irremediable” soledad humana en el teatro de Buero Vallejo’, in Antonio Buero Vallejo dramaturgo universal, ed. Mariano de Paco & Francisco Díez de Revenga (Murcia: Cajamurcia, 2001), 39–49.

13 Patricia W. O’Connor, Antonio Buero Vallejo en sus espejos (Madrid: Editorial Fundamentos, 1996), 309.

14 Buero was referring here to a series of lectures given in conjunction with a revival of his El concierto de San Ovidio but never published together as had been intended; my own paper, ‘ “Pero todo partió de allí … ”: El concierto de San Ovidio a través del prisma de su epílogo’, eventually appeared in El teatro de Buero Vallejo: homenaje del hispanismo británico e irlandés, ed. Victor Dixon & David Johnston (Liverpool: Liverpool U. P., 1996), 29–56.

15 A reference to the special issue of Anthropos published to commemorate Buero's receipt of the Premio Cervantes, to which I contributed; see note 10 above. 

16 This was his Música cercana, which premiered in Bilbao on 18 August 1989.

17 Eventually published as ‘La Fundación de Buero Vallejo, una re-creación de La vida es sueño’, in Entre actos: diálogos sobre teatro español entre siglos, ed. Martha T. Halsey & Phyllis Zatlin (University Park: Estreno, 1999), 194–204.

18 In fact Misión had its estreno on 8 October 1999, but was the last play he was able to write.

19 See Antonio Buero Vallejo, ‘Victor Dixon’, in Spanish Theatre. Studies in Honour of Victor F. Dixon, ed. Kenneth Adams, Ciaran Cosgrove & James Whiston (London: Tamesis/Boydell & Brewer, 2001, ix–x.

20 See ‘Antonio Buero Vallejo’, The Times, 17 May 2000.

21 In the hope of promoting the study of both Buero Vallejo and his works, I have published six articles since his death. Besides two articles already mentioned (see notes 6 and 12), these have included: ‘Mito, de Buero Vallejo, una re-creación del Quijote’, in Antes y después del ‘Quijote’: en el cincuentenario de la Asociación de Hispanistas de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda (València: Generalitat Valenciana/Conselleria de Cultura, Educatió i Esport, 2005), 601–10; ‘Music in the Later Dramatic Works of Antonio Buero Vallejo’, in Studies in Modern Hispanic Literatures in Honour of Donald L. Shaw, ed. Robin W. Fiddian & C. Alex Longhurst, BSS, LXXXII, 3-4 (2005), 567–88; ‘Music in the Life and Early Dramatic Works of Antonio Buero Vallejo’, in Spanish Film, Theatre and Literature in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honour of Derek Gagen, ed. David George & John London (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 2007), 237–60; ‘The Impact of the Civil War on the Life and Work of Antonio Buero Vallejo’, in Getting It Wrong in Spain: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace (1936–1975), ed., with an intro., by Susana Bayó Belenguer (London/New York: Routledge, 2015); first published BSS, XCI:1–2 (2014), 75–94.

22 Buero Vallejo, ‘Victor Dixon’, ix.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.