Myrna Casas

Myrna Casas
Born(1934-01-02)January 2, 1934
San Juan, Puerto Rico
DiedNovember 9, 2022(2022-11-09) (aged 88)
OccupationProfessor, writer and playwright
NationalityPuerto Rico
Alma materVassar College,
Boston University College of Fine Arts,
New York University

Myrna Casas (January 2, 1934 – November 9, 2022) was a Puerto Rican experimental playwright, director, actress, and theatre scholar.[1][2] She was the co-founder and artistic director of the company Producciones Cisne.[3]

Early life

Casas was born in San Juan to Carmen Busó Carrasquillo and Sixto Casas Semidei. She studied Drama at Vassar College, graduating in 1954, and earned a master's degree in acting at Boston University College of Fine Arts in 1961. She went on to study at New York University where she obtained a doctorate in Theatre education in 1974.[4]

Career

A member of the sixties generation, Casas's work addressed Puerto Rican national identity through both absurdist and realist plays.[5] She also explored the themes of women in patriarchal societies, as in her play Eugenia Victoria Herrera.[6] Her 1988 play The Great Ukrainian Circus (El gran circo Ucraniano) has been performed regularly and examined by scholars.[7]

Casas for many years taught at the University of Puerto Rico in the drama department, which she also directed for several years.[4][8] She acted in the 1950s and served in the San Juan municipal assembly from 1996 to 2000.[4]

In June 2022, the Columbia University Libraries acquired Casas's papers, including her original annotated manuscripts of all plays written since 1960, as part of its Latino Art and Activism Archives.[9] She has been compared to other Puerto Rican women in theatre, such as Victoria Espinosa and Gilda Navarra.[10]

Personal life and death

Casas died on a November 9, 2022, at the age of 88. She was buried at the Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery.[11]

Works

Casas wrote more than 30 plays, including:[4]

  • Cristal roto en el tiempo (A Glass Broken in Time) – 1960
  • Eugenia Victoria Herrera – 1964
  • Absurdos en soledad – 1964
  • La trampa (The Trap) – 1974
  • No todas lo tienen (They Don't All Have It) – 1975[8]
  • Al garete
  • Cuarenta años después (Forty Years Later) – 1976
  • Crónicas de obsesión
  • Tres noches tropicales (Three Tropical Nights)
  • Juegos de obsesión
  • Las reinas del Chantecler
  • El gran circo Ucraniano (The Great Ukrainian Circus) – 1988[8] (winner of the National Dramaturgy award of the Circle of Puerto Rican Drama Critics)[4]
  • Este país no existe (This Country Doesn't Exist) – 1993[12]

Casas also wrote an opera libretto, El mensajero de plata.[4]

Honors

Casas received honors from the Center for Advanced Studies on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean (2013), Ateneo Puertorriqueño (2005), the University of Tennessee (2006), the Puerto Rican Senate (2004), and SOGEM (Sociedad de Escritores de México) (1990).[3]

In 2019 the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón dedicated the celebration of World Theatre Day to Casas.[13]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Myrna Casas - Oxford Reference". www.oxfordreference.com. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
  2. ^ "Myrna Casas". IMDb. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
  3. ^ a b "Myrna Casas". Fundación Nacional para la Cultura Popular (in Spanish). Retrieved 2019-11-09.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Casas, Myrna - Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico.
  5. ^ Salas, Teresa Cajiao; Vargas, Margarita (1997-01-01). Women Writing Women: An Anthology of Spanish-American Theater of the 1980s. SUNY Press. p. 123. ISBN 9780791432051.
  6. ^ Arnold, A. James; Rodriguez-Luis, Julio; Dash, J. Michael (1994-09-06). A History of Literature in the Caribbean: Volume 1: Hispanic and Francophone Regions. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 245. ISBN 9789027284754.
  7. ^ Stevens, Camilla (2002). "Traveling Troupes: The Performance of Puerto Rican Identity in Plays by Luis Rafael Sánchez and Myrna Casas". Hispania. 85 (2): 240–249. doi:10.2307/4141051. ISSN 0018-2133. JSTOR 4141051.
  8. ^ a b c Cortés, Eladio; Cortes, Eladio; Barrea-Marlys, Mirta (2003). Encyclopedia of Latin American Theater. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313290411.
  9. ^ "Rare Book & Manuscript Library Acquires the Archive of Playwright Myrna Casas – News from Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library". blogs.cul.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-29.
  10. ^ Londré, Felicia Hardison; Watermeier, Daniel J. (1998-01-01). History of the North American Theater: The United States, Canada and Mexico from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present. Continuum. p. 455. ISBN 978-0-8264-1233-1.
  11. ^ "Fallece la dramaturga Myrna Casas". NotiCentro. 9 November 2022. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  12. ^ Rivera, Carlos Manuel (2007). "¿Existe la nación puertorriqueña?: Este país no existe de Myrna Casas". Latin American Theatre Review. 40 (2): 9–22. doi:10.1353/ltr.2007.0030. ISSN 2161-0576. S2CID 145399818.
  13. ^ Integradas, Comunicaciones (2019-03-19). "Dedican Día Mundial del Teatro a Myrna Casas". inSagrado (in European Spanish). Retrieved 2019-11-10.
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