Gorostiza, Carlos

(1920– )

   Argentine playwright and novelist. He was part of the Teatro Abierto Argentino (Open Theater of Argentina), an arts initiative that was perhaps the best example of cultural resistance to the military dictatorship in Argentina. Born in Buenos Aires to immigrant Basque parents, Gorostiza grew up in the suburb of Palermo. His first world experiences came in 1926, when the family settled briefly in his father’s town of Sestao, in northern Spain. Economic reverses, however, forced the return of the Gorostiza family to Argentina.

   His father, Fermín Gorostiza, a commercial traveler and one of the earliest pilots in Argentina, would soon abandon the family. In 2002, reminiscing about his 1990 play Aeroplanos (Airplanes), Gorostiza recalled being on flights with his father, who dropped publicity brochures for a local beverage company from the cockpit. A few years later, in his memoirs, Gorostiza also recalled meeting a thenunknown half-sister, noted Spanish actress Analía Gadé (née María Esther Gorostiza Rodríguez).

   Gorostiza wrote his first play, La clave encantada (The Enchanted Cipher), for puppet theater in 1943. A year earlier, he had debuted as a professional actor with the theater group La Máscara, a continuation of activities that began as early as 1937, when the then-adolescent Gorostiza directed and acted in plays sponsored by the Patronato Español de Ayuda a las Víctimas Antifascistas (Spanish Aid Committee to Antifascist Victims), an association of Spanish exiles loyal to the Republican government.

   As a playwright, his earliest success came with of El puente (The Bridge), which took Buenos Aires by storm in its premiere in 1949. El puente, staged by legendary director and producer Armando Discépolo (1887–1971), ran for an unprecedented two years on the Buenos Aires stage. Set in Buenos Aires, the play links two families, one working class and the other upper middle class, linked by the fate of two characters—Andrés, a young worker, and Luís, a wellto-do engineer, both killed in an accident centered on the bridge of the title.

   With this first venture into socially relevant drama, Gorostiza’s name was linked in Argentine dramatic circles to that of Spaniard Antonio Buero Vallejo, whose play Historia de una escalera (1949, History of a Staircase) also dealt with working-class characters in Francisco Franco’s Spain, and U.S. dramatist Arthur Miller, whose play Death of a Salesman similarly debuted the same year. Gorostiza’s El puente was both hailed and derided for the inclusion of the argot of lower-class porteños from Buenos Aires. Subsequent plays, such as El pan de la locura (1958, The Bread of Madness), would garner him greater success in the Argentine theater scene of the 1950s and 1960s. In recent years, both El puente and El pan de la locura have been successfully restaged in Argentina and abroad; the latter was staged to great acclaim in Spain in 2006, when the Asociación de Autores Teatrales Españoles named Gorostiza an Honorary Member.

   El puente was also adapted for the Argentine cinema with a screenplay by the author in 1950. Gorostiza was an early contributor to the Argentine television industry; his play Vivir aquí (Living Here, 1963) depicts the experiences of an upper- to middle-class family forced by economic circumstances to allow their living room to be transformed into a television studio—a premise that seems to pre-date contemporary obsessions with celebrity and reality shows. For Argentine television, Gorostiza also wrote a series, Los otros (The Others), which received a Martín Fierro Award in 1963, but was canceled, according to the author, “por mostrar que había pobres” (for showing that the poor exist).

   He was a member of the “Generation of the 60s,” which included Roberto Cossa, Sergio De Cecco, Ricardo Halac, Jacobo Langsner, Julio Mauricio, Carlos Somigliana, Ricardo Talesnik, Oscar Viale, and Rodolfo Walsh. Gorostiza is also the author of plays such as Los prójimos (1966, The Others); ¿A qué jugamos? (1968, What Are We Playing At?); El lugar (1970, The Place); Los hermanos queridos (1978, Dear Brothers); Cuerpos presentes (1981, Literally Present); Matar el tiempo (1982, Killing Time); Hay que apagar el fuego (1982, The Fire Must Be Put Out); El patio de atrás (1994, The Back Patio); and A propósito del tiempo (1997, Concerning Time). Between 1960 and 1962, Gorostiza worked as a theater professor in Caracas, Venezuela, an occupation he would continue until 1976 on his return to Argentina. That year, his first novel, Los cuartos oscuros (Darkened Rooms) was published in Buenos Aires as winner of the Premio Nacional de Novela (National Novel Award). Rather than marking a temporary incursion into another literary genre, Gorostiza would go on to garner recognition as a novelist as the author of Cuerpos presentes (1981, Literary Bodies), El basural (1988, The Garbage Dump), Vuelan las palomas (1999, Flight of Doves), and La buena gente (2001, Good People), as well as a volume of memoirs and poems titled El merodeador enmascarado (2004, The Masked Marauder).

   As part of the first cycle of Teatro Abierto Argentino, Gorostiza-by then an established playwright in Argentine theater circles-contributed El acompañamiento (The Accompaniment). A film adaptation of El acompañamiento premiered in 1991 in Buenos Aires. With the return of democracy following the years of military dictatorship, Gorostiza was named first Secretary for National Culture by President Raúl Alfonsín. In his new post, according to Gorostiza, he lasted for a little over two years, his tenure marred by bureaucratic obstacles and controversy.

   A respected cultural figure in his native Argentina, Gorostiza has received numerous theater awards, in addition to the Premio Planeta for Best Novel for Vuelan las palomas; a Fulbright Fellowship; and numerous recognitions by theater circles in Spain and Latin America. Carlos Gorostiza lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.