Alfonso Sastre

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Alfonso Sastre, 2008

Alfonso Sastre Salvador (* 20th February 1926 in Madrid , † 17th September 2021 in Hondarribia ) was a Spanish playwright , director , actor, translator, radio play - and screenwriter .

Life

Alfonso Sastre came from a typical middle-class family and grew up with three siblings (Aurora, Ana and José). As a child he experienced the bombings and starvation in the Spanish Civil War . He attended a Catholic primary school, Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles , and the high school at the Instituto Cardenal Cisneros in Madrid and began training as an aeronautical engineer in 1943, which he broke off after two weeks. In 1945 he and other young authors founded the group Arte Nuevo , which set itself the goal of replacing the traditional bourgeois theater in the style of Jacinto Benavente with a new, socially critical one. In addition to Sastre, this group included the following authors: Medardo Fraile , Carlos J. Costas , José Franco, José Gordón , José María Palacio and Alfonso Paso . In 1946 he enrolled in the humanities faculty of the Universidad Central de Madrid and founded the magazine Raíz with Juan Guerrero Zamora ; In it he published various articles and his translation of The Judgment by Franz Kafka . As an actor he appeared in L'annonce faite à Marie by Paul Claudel in a performance of Teatro Universitario de Ensayo , a student experimental stage on. In addition, he did his basic military service from 1948 to 1949. In 1950 he finished work on his piece Prólogo patético , which, however, was banned by the censors .

Sastre increasingly represented a "theater of social agitation": in 1950 he and José María de Quinto signed the Manifiesto del Teatro de Agitación Social (TAS) on the socio-political function of the theater , which resulted in a series of controversies in newspapers, magazines and other media triggered. In 1951 he directed The Gioconda smile by Aldous Huxley . In 1953 he completed his philology degree in Murcia ; In the same year he achieved a great success with the world premiere of Escuadra hacia la muerte (Death Squad) on March 18 at the Teatro Popular Universitario , but after the third performance the play was banned (it is about an imaginary Third World War and is classified as critical of the military ). In 1953 Alfonso Sastre also met his future wife Eva Forest , whom he married in December 1955. On March 17, 1954, La Mordaza (The Gag ) was premiered in the Teatro Reina Victoria , dealing with subjects of dictatorship, civil war and censorship. His next piece, Tierra roja (Red Earth), was also banned from performing because it dealt too openly with the subject of exploitation. This was followed by La sangre de Dios , Ana Kleiber (1955, first performed in Athens in 1960 ), Guillermo Tell tiene los ojos tristes (1955), which could not be performed until 1972 in Cagliari , as it was also banned by the Franco regime .

For his participation in student demonstrations, Sastre was arrested in 1956 and only released on bail, which meant his temporary economic ruin as his royalties were seized. For half a year he moved to Paris, where his first son Juan was born. After the premiere of El cuervo at the Teatro María Guerrero in Madrid on October 31, 1957, his Spanish passport was revoked and he was under police surveillance for the next four years. In order to avoid the constant obstruction by the censorship, he began to work on scripts for the Spanish film directors José María Forqué and Juan Antonio Bardem from 1959 . He also temporarily switched to children's theater with El circulito de tiza (1962). In 1958 his second son Pablo was born. In 1960 he and 277 other authors signed a manifesto against censorship and, together with José María del Quinto, founded the Grupo de Teatro Realista (GTR), which dedicated itself to realistic theater. In 1961 he was briefly detained again for publicly speaking out in favor of an amnesty . In 1962 he became a member of the banned Communist Party ; shortly after their daughter Eva was born, his wife was captured. In the sixties he made several trips abroad, for example to Sweden , the Soviet Union , Portugal , Colombia and in 1964 to Cuba for the first time . He was refused a visa to enter the United States in 1965. The following year he was fined 50,000 pesetas for taking part in the Spain-wide day of protest against repression (Jornada Nacional contra la Represión) . In 1967 he translated the plays Huis-clos and La Putain respectueuse by Jean-Paul Sartre , which were performed in Barcelona ; A year later, translations of Morts sans sépulture , Les mouches , Les troyennes and Les sequestrés d'Altona by Sartre and Marat / Sade by Peter Weiss followed . In 1969 his translation of Red Roses for me by Seán O'Casey was performed at the Teatro Beatriz and in 1970 his translation of Trotsky in exile was published by Peter Weiss, of whom he transferred three other dramas.

In September 1974 his wife was arrested on charges of supporting the Basque terrorist group ETA ; Sastre himself was arrested, charged with terrorism and his home was ransacked. After worldwide protests, Sastre was released on June 10, 1975 on bail of 100,000 pesetas. Because of the persistent threats, he moved to Bordeaux with his daughter Eva ; his sons, who were also threatened, were already in Cuba or Italy . On February 4, 1977, he was arrested by French police and expelled from France. He returned to Spain on the occasion of his mother's death, and his wife was released from prison at the end of May that year. The now reunited family moved to Hondarribia in the Basque Country ( Gipuzkoa ), where Sastre died in September 2021 at the age of 95. His wife died in May 2007.

In 1987/88 Alfonso Sastre spent two semesters at San Diego State University . In 1989 he gave a series of lectures through Germany and the USA.

Prizes and awards

  • Premio Viareggio of the Editori Reuniti in Italy 1976
  • Premio Reseña 1978
  • Premio Nacional de Teatro 1985
  • Premio El Espectador y la Crítica de Valladolid 1985
  • Premio Ciudad de Segovia for Los últimos días de Emmanuel Kant 1989
  • Premio Euskadi de Literatura for Demasiado tarde para Filoctetes 1991

plant

Plays

  • Uranio 235 (1946)
  • Cargamento de sueños (1949)
  • Prólogo patético (1950)
  • El cubo de la basura (1951)
  • Escuadra hacia la muerte (1953)
  • El pan de todos (1953)
  • La mordaza (1954)
  • Tierra Roja (1954)
  • Ana Kleiber (1955)
  • La sangre de Dios (1955)
  • Muerte en el barrio (1955)
  • Guillermo Tell tiene los ojos tristes (1955)
  • El cuervo (1956)
  • Asalto nocturno (1959)
  • En la red (1959)
  • La cornada 1959
  • Oficio de tinieblas (1962)
  • El circulito de tiza o Historia de una muñeca abandonada (1962)
  • MSV o La sangre y la ceniza (1965)
  • El banquete (1965)
  • La taberna fantástica (1966)
  • Crónicas romanas , (1968)
  • Melodrama (1969)
  • Ejercicios de terror (1970)
  • Askatasuna (1971)
  • Las cintas magnéticas (1971)
  • El camarada oscuro (1972)
  • Ahola no es de leíl (1974)
  • Tragedia fantástica de la gitana Celestina (1978)
  • Análisis de un comando (1978)
  • El hijo único de Guillermo Tell (1980)
  • Aventura en Euskadi (1982)
  • Los hombres y sus sombras (1983)
  • Jenofa Juncal (1983)
  • El viaje infinito de Sancho Panza (1984)
  • El cuento de la reforma (1984)
  • Los últimos días de Emmanuel Kant (1985)
  • La columna infame (1986)
  • Revelaciones inesperadas sobre Moisés (1988)
  • Demasiado tarde para Filoctetes (1989)
  • Drama titulado A (1990)
  • ¿Dónde estás, Ulalume, dónde estás? (1990)
  • Teoría de las catástrofes (1993)
  • Lluvia de ángeles sobre París (1994)
  • Los crímenes extraños (1996)
  • ¡Han matado a Procopius!
  • Crimen al otro lado del espejo
  • El asesinato de la luna llena
  • Alfonso Sastre se suicida (1997)
  • Drama titulado No (2001)

Essays and articles

  • Drama y sociedad , Madrid, Taurus, 1956.
  • Anatomía del realismo , Barcelona, ​​Seix Barral, 1965.
  • La revolución y la crítica de la cultura , Barcelona, ​​Grijalbo, 1970.
  • Crítica de la imaginación , Barcelona, ​​Grijalbo 1978.
  • Rags, marginación y jerigonça , Madrid, Legasa, 1980.
  • Escrito en Euskadi , Madrid, Revolución, 1982.
  • Prolegómenos a un teatro del porvenir , Bilbao, Hiru, 1992.
  • ¿Dónde estoy yo? Fuenterrabía, Hiru, 1994.
  • El drama y sus lenguajes I, Fuenterrabía, Hiru, 2000.
  • Las dialécticas de lo imaginario (2000).
  • El drama y sus lenguajes II, Fuenterrabía, Hiru 2001.
  • Los Intelectuales y la Utopía , Madrid, Debate, 2002.
  • Ensayo sobre lo cómico , Fuenterrabía, Hiru, 2002.
  • Limbus o los títulos de la Nada , Fuenterrabía, Hiru, 2002.
  • La batalla de los intelectuales , Cuba, 2003.
  • Manifiesto contra el pensamiento débil , Fuenterrabía, Hiru, 2003.
  • Cuatro dramas en la brecha . La Habana, Ed. Alarcos (2003).
  • El retorno de los intelectuales (co-author), Fuenterrabía, Ed. Hiru, 2004.

Narrative prose

  • El Paralelo 38 , Madrid, Horizons, 1964.
  • Las noches lúgubres , Madrid, Alfaguara, 1963.
  • Flores rojas para Miguel Servet , Madrid, Ribadeneyra, 1967.
  • El lugar del crimen , Barcelona, ​​Argos Vergara, 1982.
  • Necrópolis , Madrid, Grupo Libro 88, 1994.
  • Historias de California , Fuenterrabía, Hiru, 1996.

Poetry

  • Balada de la cárcel de Carabanchel y otros poemas celulares , Paris, Ruedo Ibérico, 1976.
  • El Evangelio de Drácula , Camp de l'Arpa, 1976.
  • El español alcance de todos , Madrid, Sensemayá Chororó, 1978.
  • TBO , Madrid, Zero-Zyx, 1978.
  • Vida del hombre invisible contada por él mismo , Madrid, Endimyón, 1994.
  • Residuos urbanos (unpublished).
  • Obra lírica y doméstica. Poemas completos . Fuenterrabía, Ed. Hiru, 2004.

Filmography (selection)

  • 1957: The Day of the Damned (Amanecer en Puerta oscura)
  • 1958: Nobody hears him praying (Un hecho violento)
  • 1960: Bread and Blood (A los cincos de la tarde)

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sastre, Alfonso
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sastre Salvador, Alfonso (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish playwright, director, actor, translator, radio play and screenwriter
BIRTH DATE February 20, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Madrid
DATE OF DEATH September 17, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Hondarribia