Out of the Wings

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Amaos los unos sobre los otros (c.1967), Jorge Díaz

Titles
English title: Love Yourselves Above All Others
Notable variations on Spanish title: La pancarta o Está estrictamente prohibido todo lo que no es obligatorio
Date written: c. 1967
First publication date: 1967
First production date: 1971
Keywords: violence > personal, morality > justice-revenge, identity > class/social standing, violence > social, history > change/revolution, power > inter-personal/game play, Social > Hierarchy, society
Pitch

GENTLEMAN:  I like to experience strong sensations, but I believe this social solidarity has lasted too long now.  I ought to begin to think of my health.

This is a play about class.  The liberal bourgeoisie is weighing down on the working class.  Quite literally.    A gentleman and a lady sit  astride two workers who bear their weight on all fours as their social superiors pontificate about social justice, the ‘armed revolution’ (a literary metaphor) and democracy whilst sipping at a gin and tonic.  Political protest is a form of performance in which the gentleman and the lady insist that their workers take part to prove that they are liberated, as long as it doesn’t interrupt anything important such as, for instance, a night out at the theatre.

The biting irreverence of Jorge Diaz’s humour undermines easy ideological solutions and instead, through laughter, stirs the audience’s conscience beyond the safe rational world of intellectual and political rhetoric.

Synopsis

The play opens with a formally dressed gentleman sitting on top of a man, Plácido, who is on all fours and is dressed in rags. The gentleman is delivering a seemingly erudite speech pro... (Read more...)

Editions
  • Díaz, Jorge. 1967. Teatro. Madrid, Taurus Ediciones

  • Díaz, Jorge. 1996. Antología subjetiva: teatro 1963 – 1995. Santiago, Red Internacional del Libro

Useful readings and websites
  • Díaz, Jorge. 1973. Love Yourselves Above All Others. In Selected Latin American One-Act Plays, eds. and trans. Francesca Colecchia and Julio Matas, pp. 177–204. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press

  • Rosenberg, Joe. 1978. ‘La Compañia de Teatro Bilingüe’, Educational Theatre Journal, 30, 2, 240-52

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Entry written by Gwendolen Mackeith. Last updated on 9 August 2011.

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