Rewriting and Identity in the Theatrical Adaptation by Miguel Torres: La cándida Eréndira

Abstract

Among the conditions of production that generally affect contemporary Spanish American theatre, the adaptation of canonical narrative texts deserves special attention. This phenomenon forms part of the discursive strategy of rewriting, a problem we are investigating within Project No. 312 at the National University of Salta. An illustrative example is La cándida Eréndira, an adaptation by the Colombian director Miguel Torres based on the short story of the same name and other texts by Gabriel García Márquez.

Starting from the reverse process of the creation of the new text, that is, from the decomposition of the rewriting work, we will attempt to corroborate—or refute—the hypotheses that have been proposed to explain it:

- There is a shortage of playwrights.
- The limited existing theatre lacks conflict, often because of its obvious political discourse.
- There is an increasing tendency to “theatricalize” the texts of our great narrators, since they are considered to contain the roots of our identity.
- Theatrical productivity in Spanish America is developing through the increasingly predominant figure of the director.

Our aim is to show that Spanish American theatrical rewriting arises as a way of promoting a dramaturgy that has not yet fully developed, unlike Spanish production, which rewrites as a result of the exhaustion of the system.