Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Julia de Burgos: Child of Water
    Julia de Burgos: Child of Water
    Julia de Burgos: Child of Water
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    Julia de Burgos: Child of Water

    By Carmen Rivera

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Julia de Burgos is one of Puerto Rico's most illustrious poets whose work has earned a place among the best Latin American and Caribbean literature of the 20th Century.

    In JULIA DE BURGOS: CHILD OF WATER, Carmen Rivera takes us on a journey through de Burgos' life capturing her passions and inner turmoil to come to terms with herself and her times. De Burgos died tragically in 1953 in New York City where she was discovered lying on an East Harlem street unconscious and without identification. She was burried in an unmarked grave until family and friends had her exhumed and returned to her beloved Puerto Rico where she received a hero's welcome.

    JULIA DE BURGOS: CHILD OF WATER is a surrealistic play. It explores the division expressed by de Burgo and the discord within herself; she frequently complained about the chaos that her SOUL caused her. Her SOUL is the artist and the fighter who confronts society’s prejudices. In CHILD OF WATER, the SOUL is treated as a separate character. The play breaks time and space and takes place in the chasm between life and death.

    Carmen Rivera ia an OBIE Award winning playwright whose works have been performed in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Latin America and abroad.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Sugarcane Press, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 7, 2015
    ISBN9781310008344
    Julia de Burgos: Child of Water
    Author

    Carmen Rivera

    Carmen Rivera holds an MA in Playwriting and Latin American Theatre from New York University’s Gallatin School. Her plays have been widely performed and published in English and Spanish in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Latin America, and abroad.Julia De Burgos: Child Of Water was first produced at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre (PRTT) in 1999 and videotaped for the archives at The Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts. Among her other key works are the musical Celia: The Life And Music Of Celia Cruz, which she co-wrote with Candido Tirado in 2007. It received an HOLA Award for Achievement in Playwriting and has toured Miami, Puerto Rico, Chicago and Spain. Her play, La Gringa, received an OBIE Award in 1996 and has been playing at Repertorio Español since, making it Off-Broadway’s longest running Spanish language play. In 2001 La Lupe: My Life, My Destiny opened Off-Broadway and received an ACE Award (Association of Journalists and Writers) for Best Production. To Catch The Lightning produced at the PRTT in 1997 was nominated for an ACE Award for Best Production.Ms. Rivera’s plays have been presented in diverse venues such as the Latino Experimental Fantastic Theatre (L.E.F.T., Founding Member); The Women’s Project & Productions; New Perspectives Theatre; La Mama E.T.C.; The Nuyorican Poet’s Café; Aaron Davis Hall; and at festivals in Moscow, Chile, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Bolivia, among many others.Ms. Rivera is co-founder with Candido Tirado of Educational Play Productions (E.P.P.), which brings plays that deal with social issues to New York City public school students and educators.

    Related to Julia de Burgos

    Related ebooks

    Historical Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Julia de Burgos

    5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Julia de Burgos - Carmen Rivera

      JULIA DE BURGOS:

      CHILD OF WATER

      By

      Carmen Rivera

      Copyright 1998 Carmen Rivera

      Published in 2014 by Red Sugarcane Press

      www.redsugarcanepress.com

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

      This book is available in print at most online retailers.

      For performance rights including amateur and stock performances and uses of this play by educational institutions, permission must be secured from the author. Contact: Ron Gwiazda of Abrams Artists Agency at

      ron.gwiazda@abramsartny.com

      DEDICATION

      For Cándido, always….

      EPIGRAPH

      In JULIA DE BURGOS: CHILD OF WATER, we have the privilege of witnessing our Julia, as she would have like to have been perceived by all, thereby honoring her life in a truly genuine and sensitive way. Carmen Rivera not only gives us the space to discover Julia de Burgos, but also offers us the sacred space to discover the dualities within ourselves. Carmen Rivera is a great writer and a worthy ambassador of the Puerto Rican artistic community.

      Brenda Torres Barreto

      Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Administration

      Director, New York Regional Office,

      Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

      Carmen Rivera’s dramaturgy is an antidote for an apathetic nostalgic gaze for Puerto Rico's past. In Child of Water, the iconic poet Julia de Burgos is caught in an intermediary state of longing for and longing to; attempting to recreate what was, while attempting to break free and establish a new, politically engaged and self-actualized identity.

      In reading this play, one becomes mesmerized by the spiritual relativity between these two women. Carmen Rivera and Julia de Burgos become symbiotic twins through their writing and desire to blur the lines between artist and creation. JULIA DE BURGOS: CHILD OF WATER positions itself as the foundation for the emerging Latina canon and Carmen Rivera as its most respected ambassador.

      Jason Ramírez, Ph.D.

      Author of Carmen Rivera: Theatre of Latinidad

      CONTENTS

      Foreword

      About Julia de Burgos

      Opening & Centennial Productions

      Synopsis & Set

      Characters

      Scene Breakdown

      Act 1

      Act 2

      Glossary of Poems

      Acknowledgments

      About the Playwright

      FOREWORD

      Since her first hugely successful incursion into theatre with La Gringa in 1996, the longest running play in New York’s Latino theatre/Off-Broadway history, every contribution Carmen Rivera has made to the canon has been important and moving. From La Lupe to Celia Cruz, Rivera has fearlessly appropriated Latina icons and made them accessible to contemporary audiences.

      Now her authentic, complex portrait of the revered Puerto Rican literary/feminist/political legend, Julia de Burgos, is available to a new public, making Julia universal, as she once said she dreamed of being.

      JULIA DE BURGOS: CHILD OF WATER is an invitation into the heart and soul of the poet and patriot, the woman who would become the best known Puerto Rican poet of the century, embraced by feminists, by the Left and internationally by lovers of poetry. In CHILD OF WATER, Rivera paints a rich historical, political and cultural canvas, situating Julia in her historical moment of the 1950s; the Nationalist movement for independence from the United States; the literary fervor she shared with the iconic Pablo Neruda and the consummate story teller/politician Juan Bosch.

      The play visually offers us what Julia offered us in her verses, a fierce determination to be herself, to live and die with the emblazoned banner of freedom and poetry on high. Rivera’s talent lies in creating moments that define Julia’s character: her authentic exchanges with her classist, sexist, racist Dominican lover, Juan Jiménez Grullón; her poignant, gut wrenching exchanges with her alter ego, the character Woman/Soul, who embodies the artist, the fighter, the champion of personal and political freedom; the exchanges with her mother where she shares her pantheistic ideals, her love, indeed her need, for nature in general, but more specifically, her river, Río Grande de Loiza; the rich and revealing interchange with Pablo Neruda where he offers advice to an angry and indignant Julia, affirming that Art should come from love, not hate. One of the many gifts Rivera gives her audience is his response to Julia’s question, What if I am surrounded by anger? Feel it, transform it and release it.

      The conflictive dualities that de Burgos experiences provide the through line of the play. The text breathes life into the age old dilemma that women, especially artists, face: how to be a writer, have a personal life, have a career and somehow find balance. Rivera reveals the pain and beauty, the sacrifices and rewards of being an artist (It’s a curse, this longing to write … a sweet curse.) She also explores what it means to have a gift, a calling, a mission and how these talents get subverted.

      Rivera gives us the gift of Julia’s poetry interspersed throughout the play as a complement to the dramatic action. We experience the desperation of Give Me My Number, the inspiration of the Latin American feminist anthem A Julia de Burgos, which takes on another dimension as we see/hear the interaction between the Woman/Soul and Julia, and finally we experience the sadness - yet triumph - of art over death, especially in Poem For My Death.

      Just as Julia took her audiences on a journey as she wrote and recited her poems, so does Rivera take us on a journey in this play, posing implicit questions,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1