[In the following essay, Podol considers the relationship between the stage settings and the portrayal of reality in La fundación and Griselda Gámbaro's Las paredes.]

In his introduction to the book Encounter with Reality, John Horrocks makes the following observation: “To a large degree, man can control reality—even as he can create, he can destroy, and sometimes he is defenseless, and reality can be imposed upon him. But of all man's activities, the struggle to come to terms with reality is at the apex of his experience.”¹ Human nature is such that the confrontation of reality, under any conditions, is never an exact replication of the environment, but rather an individual process of rearrangement and modulation.² And in Griselda Gámbaro's Las paredes and Antonio Buero Vallejo's La fundación, both of which present a dramatic milieu permeated with imprisoning totalitarian forces, the need on the part of the protagonists to seek refuge in a subjective, inner reality becomes paramount. The implementation of the process of modifying reality is manifested through the stage settings of the plays. This technique involves the audience in a direct and immediate manner in the task of defining and dealing with the nature of man's existence, while posing the Pirandellian question of the interrelationship between life and form, between illusion and reality.³

Las paredes (1963), Griselda Gámbaro's first published play, was written in her native Argentina. The play has a metaphysical and universal dimension, but also dramatizes the political situation in her strife-torn country. The opening description of the apartment where the Youth finds himself imprisoned communicates immediately the essential role of self-deceit and illusion in the work; the heavy curtains on the wall “ocultan lo que parece ser una ventana.”⁴ In fact, as the Official demonstrates, there is only a blank wall behind those curtains. And hanging on that same wall is a painting which “representa a un joven lánguido mirando a través de una ventana” (p. 9).⁵ The adjective “lánguido” serves to foreshadow the Youth's complete loss of spirit and of the will to survive that we witness at the play's conclusion. The window that is in the painting but not in the actual room adds another level of reality to the drama, undermining both the protagonist's and the audience's confidence in the range and veracity of their perceptions. The Official adds further to this doubt and insecurity by explaining: “¿Observó Vd. el cuadro? Pintura de primera calidad. Usted creyó que había una ventana detrás de los cortinados, yo creí que había aquí una ventana (señala la ventana en el cuadro). Aquí en estos vidrios que reflejan el sol, que se ensucian como los reales. Optimismo, joven. Mejor que la ventana no esté en ningún lado. Prefiero enriquecer los símbolos. Fraguar ventanas sobre un muro, un cuaderno, un ojo. En todos lados, menos en las ventanas” (p. 19).⁶ The Official, then, who controls the perceptions, thoughts, and ultimately the very existence of the Youth, communicates early in the play the deceitful nature of a world which conspires to thwart all of our attempts to perceive and comprehend its essence.

The threatening, irrational nature of life is underscored further by contradictory forces in the drama; the clash between the Custodian's “barba despareja y de varios días” and “el aseo del uniforme” (p. 9)⁷ helps to explain his role in the work which consists of aiding the Official in his quest to disorient and ultimately destroy the Youth. And the Official's superficial concern for the Youth and dignified, decorous manner conflict with the reality of his sadistic perversity. The most powerful symbol of the destructive force inherent in Gámbaro's dramatic ambience, however, is the room itself. Throughout Las paredes it becomes smaller and less comfortably furnished. As Sandra Cypess has noted, “The mental transformation of the Youth is reflected in a parallel diminution of the physical surroundings.”⁸ Through the visible stage setting, the audience participates actively in this transformation. At the beginning of the second and final act, the picture is no longer hanging on the wall. The different levels of reality are being sorted out, leaving only the inescapable destruction of the protagonist. The oppressive nature of this impending reality is heightened in the stage directions at the beginning of the final scene: “El ambiente se verá luego notablemente reducido al cuadro anterior. Como únicos muebles, un cate y una silla ocupan casi todo el espacio” (p. 47).⁹ The furniture itself has become a threatening component of the Youth's environment, limiting his movement and impinging on his freedom on both a physical and a symbolic plane.

The visual elements that communicate the Youth's predicament are reinforced by the Official's psychological torture of his prisoner. When the Youth, who never does learn why he has been brought to the site of his ultimate destruction, admits to the Official that he expected to encounter a prison cell and not an elegant apartment, the latter responds knowingly: “¡Qué lejos de la realidad vive Vd!” (p. 14).¹⁰ This ironic statement is true precisely because the apartment is a prison cell and the Youth's defense mechanisms do not allow him to recognize and accept the true nature of his “circunstancia dramática.” The Youth is even told his fate, first implicitly, then explicitly, yet he still blocks it out. Several times during the play, terrifying cries are heard. When the Youth questions the nature and significance of those screams, the Official, laughing, responds: “Los otros, Están como usted, alojados confortablemente y gritan. ¿Se les cae la pared encima?” (p. 17).¹¹ Although we do not actually witness the horrifying death of the Youth that the Official has alluded to so deviously (a death worthy of the creative imagination of an Edgar Allan Poe or Horacio Quiroga), we are equally disturbed by the former's spiritual annihilation.

At the end of the drama, the Official and the Custodian abandon the Youth to his fate. But now they leave the door open, telling him not to move, just to wait. And “el joven mira hacia la puerta, luego con obediente determinación, muy rígido, la muñeca entre los brazos, los ojos increíble y estúpidamente abiertos, espera” (p. 60).¹² The life-sized doll that he holds had been brought to him from his apartment. It is an object that he has always despised and did not destroy only because it belonged to his landlady, another representative of authoritarian force in his life. By accepting the existence of ugliness and passivity, embodied by the doll, the Youth has helped to bring about his own demise. He has become as docile, rigid, and inhuman as the doll he holds on his lap as he waits for the walls to crush him. The grotesque nature of his existence is made manifest through this human-like creature¹³ that symbolizes the dehumanization of the Youth.

Props and stage setting are active components of Gámbaro's dramatic ambience. They play essential roles in communicating her themes and in contributing to the efficacy of the drama as a staged work in the theater. They also help to underscore the circularity inherent in both the structure and the theme of the drama. The picture of the languid youth staring out of the window is removed from the room, and the Official informs us that it is now hanging in a different room (or prison cell). Thus, the dehumanization of man, effected in part through the undermining of his reality perceptions, is shown to be an ongoing process. This circularity manifests itself in a number of ways in the work. As Cypess has observed: “Its structure is circular in that it begins and ends with the anguished cries of unknown origin. There is also a sense of circularity in the progress of the Youth's knowledge, for despite his questions, he knows no more than when he was first detained.”¹⁴

Just as the audience participates, through the changes in stage setting, in the Youth's psychological and physical destruction, we also share the guilt of allowing totalitarian forces in Argentina and throughout the world to govern our behavior. Gámbaro has continued to explore in subsequent plays the machinations of social and political pressures that deprive man of his basic human dignity. Those very forces obliged her to leave her native land and emigrate to Spain, where she could continue to pursue her career in her native language, free from external restraints.¹⁵ Until just a few years ago, of course, the political ambience in Spain also precluded such artistic freedom. In response to the totalitarian forces present in his country and inspired in part by his own memories of the inside of a Spanish prison, Buero Vallejo authored a play that parallels Las paredes in its utilization of stage setting to reflect the inner states of consciousness of its protagonist and ultimately of the audience as well.

La fundación (1974), like Las paredes, begins with a detailed description of a well-appointed room; in the case of the Buero play the lovely landscape visable through the window is also included. This description contains an allusion to the clash resulting from the juxtaposition of several of the components of the setting; this clash as well as the prescribed lighting introduces an element of uncertainty that is central to the theme of the work. The opening stage directions conclude as follows: “con su contradictoria mezcla de modernidad y estrechez, la habitación sugiere una instalación urgente y provisional el servicio de alguna actividad valiosa y en marcha. La risueña luz de la primavera inunda el paisaje; cernida e irisada claridad, un tanto irreal, en el aposento.”¹⁶ Both of these works, then, deceive the audience by presenting a stage design which proves to be a falsification of the true nature of the drama's setting.

To an even greater degree than in Las paredes, the progressive changes in the set of La fundación mirror the evolution of the psychological state of the play's protagonist, Tomás. Buero Vallejo himself has emphasized the importance of Tomás's gradual emergence from the protective cloud of insanity into the reality of his betrayal of his fellow prisoners, his incarceration, and his impending death. Buero's statement, extracted from a letter written to a critic, reads as follows: “El cambio de Tomás en la obra es la esencia de la obra—y con él, el posible cambio de los espectadores igualmente alienados—. Es la madurez, precipitada por el zarpazo de la realidad; es la desalienación progresiva que también quisiéramos para el público. Estéticamente, se articula mediante esos efectos míos de ‘participación’, que creo legítimos dramáticamente y que Domenech ha llamado en su libro ‘efectos de la inmersión’.”¹⁷

In La fundación, the exposition, which is traditionally presented in the opening scenes of a play, is delayed and purposely obfuscated. The gradual clarification of the characters' true situation becomes an essential component of the central conflict in the drama. This clarification is effected primarily through the evolution of the stage setting; it initially appears to represent a large, comfortable room ideally suited to the work conducted there by young, talented researchers, but is finally shown to be a stark prison cell whose inhabitants all await death. Tomás and the audience experience mutually the painful realization that the ineluctable reality of the play and of life is both grim and absolute. As in Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV, the other characters attempt to help Tomás regain his sanity and come to grips with the truth by pretending that his fantasy is an accurate representation of their situation. Accordingly, they feign actions that might occur in a “Foundation,” but are impossible in their prison cell. And we, the audience, are forced to question our own perceptions. When Tulio, a fellow inmate, gathers imaginary glasses and takes them to the sink, Tomás and the spectators become perplexed; but the other characters, who are all seeking to assist Tomás by accepting his perceptions, act as if nothing were wrong. And when Tulio obligingly snaps a photograph—utilizing, of necessity, a glass instead of a camera—Tomás is infuriated; he does not yet comprehend what is occurring, but on some level senses that Tulio's action is a threat to his subjective vision of life. The strength of his feelings is explainable by the fact that reality construction is a fundamental feature of our instinct for self-preservation. As Murphy and Spohn explain, “the decisive criterion of the adequacy, completeness, or appropriateness of reality construction is a pragmatic one; namely the survival of the individual organism, of species, and ultimately, of culture.”¹⁸

As in Las paredes, the importance of visual perceptions is reinforced through the motif of painting. Tomás avidly examines an art book, describing some of the paintings to his companions. But it is Tulio, the photographer, who knows the exact details of each painting, even though he is not looking at them. Seeing, then, transcends the physiological function of the eyes, acquiring a more profound, metaphysical dimension. The only painting that Tulio does not know is also significant to the meaning of the play; it is described by Tomás as follows: “Ratones en una jaula. Un tema sórdido. Hay algo repelente en las expresiones de estos animales. Tom Murray. No sé quién es” (p. 170).¹⁹ The grotesque image of the rat alludes to Tomás himself; this identification is reinforced by the name of the artist and by Tomás's girlfriend, Berta. In Tomás's fantasy, she is also at the Foundation, conducting research with rats. She has made a pet of one of the creatures and named it “Tomasito.” In an important scene, Tomás, speaking to Berta, says of these laboratory animals and their fate: “Un martirio dulce: ellos ignoran que lo sufren y hasta el final se les trata bien. ¿Qué mayor destino? Si yo fuera un ratoncito lo aceptaría.” But Berta admonishes him: “No. Tú eres un ratoncito y no lo aceptas” (p. 140).²⁰ When we come to realize that this scene has transpired in Tomás's imagination, it acquires a whole new meaning. Tomás is wrestling with himself to recognize and accept the reality of his situation: that of a prisoner who will be slaughtered like an animal. And central to that internal struggle is the component of his subconscious represented by Berta that is urging him on toward that acceptance. Tomás, like the Youth in Las paredes, has not yet recognized the symbolic value of what is depicted in the painting. But while the Youth affirms the passive role the painting assigns to him, Tomás, who is both the creator (Tom Murray) and the interpreter of his destiny, does employ his evolving insights to assert his existential freedom.

Tulio plays an important role in Tomás's gradual emergence into the reality of life as a prison. He is the only character whose supposed research mission at the Foundation corresponds to his work in real life; hence, symbolically, he serves as a bridge between the two realms that give shape to Tomás's existence. As a photographer, Tulio has become interested in holography—the projection of illusory images in the air. He tells of a humorous episode in which his girlfriend and assistant got him to kiss her hologram, thinking it was really she in the flesh. The hologram becomes the central metaphor of the play; reinforced by the progressive changes in stage setting, it helps to create the different levels in the work. Asel, the oldest of the prisoners, and a principal spokesman for Buero, affirms the importance of the metaphor in the following words addressed to Tomás: “Todo, dentro y fuera, como un gigantesco holograma desplegado ante nuestras conciencias, que no sabemos si son nuestras, ni lo que son. Y tú un holograma para mí, y yo, para ti, otro …” (p. 239).²¹

Life, then, is a hologram. And if the ultimate reality seems to be imprisonment, that too may be yet another illusion. As Tomás emerges from the sanctuary of his subjective vision, he sees the prison as it is; but he also sees beyond that level of reality, recognizing that all of life is a series of illusions. This important concept is strikingly reminiscent of a central theme in the dramas of Jean Genet. The following observation about Genet's theater also elucidates, indirectly, La fundación: “What we call reality is only illusion piled on illusion. When all the layers of illusion are stripped away, what is left is emptiness.”²² Tomás's keenest perceptions transcend the level of reality contained in the final stage setting, calling into question the possibility of man's knowing the form of his existence. His words, filled with existential import, are as follows: “Ya sé que no era real. Pero me pregunto si el resto del mundo lo es más … También a los de afuera se les esfuma de pronto el televisor, o el vaso que querían beber, o el dinero que tenían en la mano … O un ser querido … Y siguen creyendo, sin embargo, en su confortable fundación … Y alguna vez, desde lejos, verán este edificio y no se dirán: es una cárcel. Dirán: parece una fundación … ¿No será entonces igualmente ilusorio el presidio?” (p. 239).²³

Buero Vallejo's principal theme in La fundación appears to be the need to face reality, no matter how painful it may be. As Francisco Ruiz Ramón states in his excellent study of the Spanish contemporary theater: “La única condición es mantener los ojos abiertos a la verdad, negarnos a soñar Fundaciones que nos hagan felices, pero enajenados.”²⁴ Yet the need to dream is also affirmed. Although Tulio, when he is led off to his death, tells Tomás not to dream, it is difficult to dismiss the authenticity and the merit of his hopes as expressed in his earlier defense of fantasizing, directed to Asel: “¡Déjanos soñar un poco, Asel! ¡El se reunirá con su novia y yo con la mía! La vida no tendría sentido si eso no sucediera. Yo te comprendo muy bien, Tomás. ¡Un día las abrazaremos! Y no serán ilusiones, no serán hologramas” (p. 204).²⁵ And Asel himself, as he in turn is led off to his death, tells Tomás, “Tu paisaje es verdadero” (p. 241).²⁶

This need to hope, to fantasize, is also encountered in Genet's work. In her analysis of The Balcony, Bettina Knapp notes, “Man cannot live within the framework of reality (rational approach); he must be spurred on by some symbol-image or fantasy to realize his dream.”²⁷ Although her statement is equally valid with respect to La fundación, Buero's theater departs from Genet's both in technique (the Artaudian component of Genet's drama is absent in Buero—it is far more evident in Gámbaro's Las paredes and becomes increasingly important in her subsequent works) and in the incorporation into the conclusion of a definite element of hope.²⁸ Just before Tomás himself is removed from the cell to face an uncertain end, which is probably death, but still contains the possibility of escape and freedom, he finds the strength to confront his dramatic situation honestly and to state: “Yo no enloqueceré ya por esa ilusión, ni por ninguna otra. Si hay que morir, no temblaré … ¡ Pero mientras viva, esperaré! … Esperaré ante las bocas de los fusiles y sonreiré al caer, porque todo habrá sido un holograma” (p. 255).²⁹ Hope, in one respect, resides in the possibility that the cruelty and horror inherent in life may also be illusions. But in a more profound sense, hope emerges from human empathy, from Tulio and Asel's willingness to assist Tomás, despite his betrayal, under torture, of his companions; and there is hope in the resilence of youth, the renewed energy and desire that Tomás finds at the end of the play which enable him to accept his fate but also to continue to fantasize the existence of a better world, of a higher reality.

La fundación, like Las paredes, projects a central view of life as a prison and of man as the victim of totalitarian forces. Both plays coincide in their utilization of a prison official and his assitant as insidious representatives of political oppression, all the more terrifying because of their superficial politeness and hypocritical concern for their “guests.” As Asel states in La fundación, the worst prisons are those which actually are as lush as Tomás's Foundation, because “a sus inquilinos les parecerá la libertad misma. Habra que ser entonces muy inteligente para no olvidar que se es un prisionero” (p. 241).³⁰ And as has been noted, both plays employ stage setting to involve the audience actively in the process of discovering and recognizing the truth: in Spain, in Argentina, and in much of the modern world, man is, in many respects, a prisoner. Both works further underscore the tragic finality of the human condition through the circularity of their structures. This feature of Las paredes has already been considered; in La fundación, at the very end of the play, the stage setting is restored to its original form and the Encargado, with sardonic politeness, invites the new occupants (and indirectly the audience) to enter the Foundation. As the curtain falls, the audience is obliged once again to reassess or edit reality. Murphy and Spohn affirm the fundamental role of this process in human existence in the following manner: “It is this editing of the real, this calling into existence of that which was only potentially there, and of turning back again into the potential that which a minute ago was real, that is the process of facing the real and of creating the real.”³¹

In the totalitarian world that these two playwrights place on the stage, reality is almost too horrifying to face. Yet the process of editing that reality and coming to terms with it on a personal, subjective level, can be in itself a therapeutic and ultimately hopeful venture. In that respect Buero's and Gámbaro's plays are diametrically opposed. Her play ends on a note of total despair because the protagonist loses the will to affirm life and to deal with reality; but Buero's work concludes hopefully precisely because Tomás finally does confront fully his situation in life and finds the strength to persevere. However, the two dramatists' depiction of totalitarianism, choice of metaphors, and use of stage setting to oblige the audience to participate in the process of examining and identifying reality, coincide to a remarkable degree. Both owe a debt to Pirandello and Genet in their treatment of illusion and reality, yet both manage to create unique works that have their own individuality and that diverge in technique and theme from their predecessors. That both playwrights now live and write in a Spain which at the present moment affords the greatest degree of artistic freedom to Spanish-speaking dramatists is but another example of the mutability of reality, the theme that Gámbaro and Buero have so innovatively and movingly examined in their respective works.

Notes

1. Gardner Murphy and Herbert E. Spohn, Encounter with Reality (Boston, 1968), p. viii.

2. Ibid., p. 29.

3. Richard Gilman, in his discussion of Pirandello's theater in The Making of Modern Drama (New York, 1974), makes the following pertinent statement about this theme: “Things are not either illusion or reality, but both, and to make this truth present on the stage is one driving purpose of Pirandello's complex dramatic art” (p. 159). There is a Pirandellian component in these plays, although the Italian dramatist's exploration of the autonomy of character and of the levels of illusion inherent in theater is of limited importance, particularly in the case of Las paredes. A more complete comparison of Pirandello's theater and these works is beyond the scope of this comparative study.

4. Gámbaro, Las paredes, in Teatro: Las paredes, El desatino, Los siameses (Barcelona, 1979), p. 9. All references to Las paredes will be taken from this edition of the work and all of the English translations of quotations are my own. The English equivalent of this quotation is as follows: “hide what appears to be a window.”

5. “represents a languid young man looking out of a window.”

6. “Did you observe the painting? A work of high quality. You thought that there was a window behind the curtains, and I believed that there was one here (he points to the window in the painting). Here on these panes of glass that get dirty just like real ones. Optimism, my young man. It is better that the window not be anywhere. I prefer to enrich symbols. To forge windows on a wall, a notebook, an eye. Everywhere except on windows.”

7. “his unkempt beard that has been neglected for several days” and “neatness of his uniform.”

8. Sandra Messinger Cypess, “The Plays of Griselda Gámbaro,” in Dramatists in Revolt: The New Latin American Theater, ed. Leon F. Lyday and George W. Woodyard (Austin, Tex., 1976), p. 96.

9. “The atmosphere has become noticeably constricted in comparison with the previous scene. As the only furniture, a bed and a chair occupy the entire space.”

10. “How far from reality you live!”

11. “The others. They are comfortably lodged, like you, and yet they scream. Are the walls falling in on them?”

12. “the young man looks at the door, then with obedient determination, very rigid, like the doll between his arms, his eyes incredibly and stupidly opened wide, he waits.”

13. The puppet and doll are often used as grotesque objects because of their resemblance to the human form and ability to assume awkward, ludicrous positions and to mimic human emotions in a manner that is both disturbing and amusing. See any of the standard studies of the grotesque (e.g., Wolfgang J. Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, Bloomington, Ind., 1963).

14. Cypess, p. 97.

15. Since the completion of this study I have been informed that Gámbaro has decided to abandon her career as a playwright and to return to Argentina because her husband, a sculptor, was unable to adjust to life in Spain and to continue to create art there.

16. Buero Vallejo, La fundación (Madrid, 1974), p. 137. The italics, which draw attention to several significant words, are my own. All subsequent references to this play will be taken from this edition. The translation of the quotation is as follows: “with its contradictory combination of modernity and intimacy, the room suggests a provisional installation designed for an important activity that is well under way. The smiling light of spring floods the landscape; sifting, rainbow-hued brightness, somewhat unreal, in the room.”

17. Buero Vallejo, letter of 4 June 1975, quoted in Emilio F. Bejel, “El proceso dialéctico en la fundación de Buero Vallejo,” Cuadernos americanos, 219 (julio-agosto, 1978), 239. “The change in Tomás is the essence of the work—and with it, the possible change in the equally alienated spectators—. It is the maturity, precipitated by the resounding blow of reality; it is the progressive disalignment which we also wish to effect in the public. Esthetically, it is expressed by those ‘participatory’ effects of mine, which I believe to be dramatically legitimate, and which Domenech has called in his book ‘effects of immersion’.”

18. Murphy and Spohn, p. 4.

19. “Rats in a cage. A sordid theme. There is something repellent in the expressions of these animals. Tom Murray. I don't know who he is.”

20. “What greater destiny? If I were a little rat I would accept it.” “No. You are a little rat and you will not accept it.”

21. “Everything, within and without, like a gigantic hologram unfolded before our consciences, which we cannot be certain are ours, nor can we know what they are. And you a hologram for me, and I, for you, another. …”

22. George Wellwarth, The Theater of Protest and Paradox (New York, 1964), p. 114.

23. “I know now that it was not real. But I ask myself if the rest of the world is more so … Also those on the outside may suddenly have their television set vanish, or the glass of water that they wanted to drink, or the money that they had in their hand … Or a beloved one … And they continue believing, nevertheless, in their comfortable foundation … And some day, from afar, they will see this building and they will not say: it is a prison. They will say: it appears to be a foundation … Will the prison then not be equally illusionary?”

24. Francisco Ruiz Ramón, Historia del teatro español, 3rd edition (Madrid, 1977), II, 114. “The only condition is to maintain one's eyes open to the truth, to refuse to dream Foundations that make us happy, but alienated.”

25. “Let us dream a little. Asel! He will be reunited with his sweetheart and I with mine. Life would not make any sense if that didn't happen. I understand you very well, Tomás. One day we will kiss them! And they will not be illusions, they will not be holograms.”

26. “Your landscape is genuine.”

27. Bettina L. Knapp, Jean Genet (New York, 1968), p. 127.

28. See Martha T. Halsey's “Buero Vallejo and the Significance of Hope,” Hispania, 51 (1968), 57-66, for a consideration of this theme in Buero's theater. Halsey has also examined the reality-illusion theme in an early play of Buero's in her study “Reality versus Illusion: Ibsen's The Wild Duck and Buero Vallejo's En la ardiente oscuridad,” Contemporary Literature, 11 (1970), 48-57.

29. “I will no longer go mad because of that illusion nor any other. If it is necessary to die, I will not tremble with fear … But while I live, I will hope! … I will hope in front of the mouths of the guns and I will smile when I fall, because everything will have been a hologram.”

30. “they will seem like freedom itself to their inmates. One will have to be very clever not to forget that one is a prisoner.”

31. Op. cit., p. 137.