FSA paid Homage to Shakespeare and Cervantes on April 23rd 2015 at the opening night of the Buenos Aires International Book Fair.
Our own Mercedes de la Torre, FSA President, was the first speaker. She traced the extensive tradition of playing Shakespeare in Argentina, since its independence in 1816, mentioning world-class actors, such as the recently deceased Alfredo Alcón, who played Shakespearean roles throughout their careers, as well as writers like Jorge Luis Borges, a great admirer of both Shakespeare and of the English literature.
Juan Diego Vila, professor of Cervantine studies at the University of Buenos Aires, followed her. He emphasized the different ways of understanding the character of Don Quixote in different cultures, and how the image of a lone man fighting windmills captured the imagination of the revolutionaries fighting for freedom, and became a metaphor for their own quest for liberty.
The third guest was Miguel Repiso, an internationally known graphic artist known as “Rep”, who recently completed an illustrated version of Dante’s Divine Comedy. He has worked on images of Don Quixote, not only as illustrations for a soon-to-be-released reprint of this classic novel, but also as murals in the twin cities of Alcalá de Henares in Spain and Azul in Argentina, as well as some images of Hamlet for a recently published book Hamlet & Hamlet by Liliana Heer. He was interviewed by Carlos Drocchi, FSA Executive Director. The ensuing conversation was lively and informative, revolving principally around the process of working with these icons of world literature and transforming them into pen and ink images.The third guest was Miguel Repiso, internationally known graphic artist known as “Rep”, who recently completed an illustrated version of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. He also worked on images of Don Quixote, not only as illustrations for a soon-to-be-released reprint of this classic, but also as murals in the twin cities of Alcalá de Henares in Spain and Azul in Argentina, as well as some images of Hamlet for a recently published book “Hamlet & Hamlet” by Liliana Heer. He was interviewed by Carlos Drocchi, FSA Executive Director, and the conversation that ensued was lively and informative, revolving principally around the process of working with these icons of world literature and transforming them into pen and ink images.
The event closed with a staged reading of “Dos ilustres lunáticos, o La divergencia universal” (Two Illustrious Lunatics, or, The Universal Divergence) by modernist writer Leopoldo Lugones, performed by two well-known performers: classical actor Horacio Peña (an extraordinary Falstaff in a version of Henry IV, Part 2, directed by Rubén Szuchmacher, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in 2012 as part of the Globe to Globe Festival), as “Q”, and Juan Gil Navarro, as “H”. Frequent FSA collaborator, Eugenio Polisky, performed the introduction and conclusion of this text. In this short play, two men, Q and H, meet at a train platform, and exchange their opposing viewpoints on life. Q is an anarchist, while H is a conservative aristocrat. Only at the end does each realize that their interlocutor was actually Hamlet and Quixote.
The audience immensely enjoyed the witty and ironic text and performance.
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