The Department of Languages and Literatures and Sigma Delta Pi
present an interview with
Fernando Arrabal
Distinguished Spanish Playwright, Novelist
and Poet
Interview will be conducted by Dr. Marie-Lise Gazarian.
Date
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Time
10:45 a.m.
Location
Marillac Hall, Room 139, Queens Campus
Fernando Arrabal Terán was born in Melilla, Spanish Morocco.
Since 1955 he has made his home in Paris, although he frequently
visits Spain. An internationally-renowned playwright, director and
film producer, he is also a novelist, essayist and poet, and his
works have been translated into many languages.
In his plays, written in the tradition of the Theatre of the
Absurd, to which he refers as “Panic Theatre,” he reconciles the
holy and the blasphemous, where opposites meet and clash in a
search for freedom and the absolute. A non-conformist, he is both
an anarchist and a man of tradition. Author of some sixteen volumes
of plays, his drama has been performed all over the world. His play
Una Doncella Para Una Gorila (The Red Madonna or a Damsel
in Distress) premiered under his direction at the Intar Theater, in
New York, in 1986.
Among his other plays are: Guernica, 1961 (Guernica and
Other Plays, 1967); L’architecte et l’empereur d’Assyrie,
1967 (The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria, 1969); El
extravagante Triunfo de Jesucristo, Karl Marx y William
Shakespeare (The Extravagant Triumph of Jesus Christ,
Karl Marx and William Shakespeare,) 1982; La Inquisición,
1982 (The Inquisition, 1983). He received the Nadal prize in 1983
for his novel La Torre Herida por el Rayo (The Tower
Struck by Lightning, 1988). Some of his other novels are:
Champagne pour tous (2002); Ceremonia por un Teniente
Abandonado (Ceremony for a Forsaken Lieutenant, 1998);
La Piedra Iluminada, 1985 (The Compass Stone, 1987);
La Vierge Rouge, 1986 (The Red Madonna, 1991); La Hija
de King Kong (King Kong’s Daughter), 1988; Un Esclavo
Llamado Cervantes, 1996 (A Slave called Cervantes). He
is also the author of a series of letters: Carta al general
Franco, 1972; Carta a Fidel Castro, 1984; Carta a
José María Aznar, 1993; and Carta al Rey de España,
1995. Arrabal has received some of the most prestigious awards.
His first play, Pique-nique en campagne, 1959,
Picnic on the Battlefield, 1967, written at the age of
fourteen, remains his most performed work..
For further information, please contact Dr. Marie-Lise Gazarian,
St. John’s University, Queens, NY. (718) 990-5209, or (718)
990-6314.