(Un)homely Stages: Surrogation, Re-enactment, and Repetition in the Theatre(s) of Exile

This chapter focuses on the relationship between homeland and exile, past and present, interior and exterior in the theatre and performance cultures of Spanish Republican Exile, with particular reference to the transmission and reception of Catalan theatre between 1939 and 1975 against the backdrop of Spain’s so-called ‘historical communities’—i.e. the Basque, Galician and Catalan exile and diaspora—for whom participation in diasporic choirs, dance and theatre groups became a mode of remembering and revivifying their relationship to the language and culture of their respective homelands from 1939 onwards. The analysis embraces three axes: (1) repetition/surrogation—the adaptation of classic community myths or legends for the stage, such as Ambrosi Carrion’s L’Hereu Riera (The Riera Heir, 1940) and La Dama de Reus (The Lady of Reus, 1949), and Ramon Vinyes’s Hàmlet, dramaturg (Hamlet, the Dramatist, 1944), and also the inner exile plays of Salvador Espriu; (2) reenactment/inter(in)animation—the restaging of key places of memory relating to community history, particularly those pertaining to the ruins of the Republic and Civil War, such as Odó Hurtado’s Vendaval (Gale), Maria Lluïsa Algarra’s Casandra o la llave sin puerta (Casandra or the door without a key, 1953) and Mercè Rodoreda’s Un dia (One day, 1959); (3) repertoire—evaluating debates over transmission relating to the staging of texts at home and in exile, from Josep Maria de Sagarra’s ‘bourgeois’ comedies to the more ‘resistant’ plays of Manuel de Pedrolo, among others.