Bøger af Jose Rivera

... Y las estrellas desaparecieronLa explicación oficial fue que el sistema Solar había penetrado en una burbuja de niebla cósmica oscura.Algunos científicos opinaron diferente: "Las estrellas dejaron de verse porque el espacio más allá de nuestro sistema planetario dejó de existir y no hay razón para que solo permanezca la porción donde estamos".Cuando las leyes de la física parecían haber desaparecido, Tomás González pensó en una hipótesis que explicaría aquel y otros hechos extraordinarios que estaban ocurriendo; tales como cohetes intercontinentales fuera de control, aparición de extraterrestres con superpoderes, de cualquier modo...

"An evening of considerable heat and no little roughshod beauty. The work, poetic in concept and symbolism, is set in the back yard of a Puerto Rican enclave in Patchogue, L I, but also in the recent mystic past of blood rivalries and macho Montague/Capulet feuds..." Jerry Tallmer, New York Post "José Rivera's provocative, intriguing THE PROMISE... But what's most impressive about THE PROMISE is its brazen insistence that theater can dare to be great in the old-fashioned meaning of the word. This play makes no apologies for the theater, never tries to imitate film or television conventions. It restores the stage to its transformative, religious, spiritual origins. It believes in the theater as the one, true sanctuary for our communal dreams, our social nightmares, our superstitious secrets. It keeps theater's promise to raise forbidden issues and explore taboo topics... THE PROMISE makes a vow in the first scene--to offer an exotic, lush weave of the surreal and the real--which it never betrays." Richard Stayton, Los Angeles Herald Examiner "José Rivera is out of the kitchen sink and into magical realism--that's the term the playwright uses to describe THE PROMISE, a modern-day tale of love, death--and love beyond it... THE PROMISE is about maturation, growth, about leaving superstition behind. It's also very concerned with the cultural genocide that's happening in Puerto Rico... They learn English in school, and the indigenous folklore is not taught..." Janice Arkatov, Los Angeles Times

This collection includes six short plays: FLOWERS, TAPE, A TIGER IN CENTRAL PARK, GAS, THE CROOKED CROSS, and THE WINGED MAN. The genesis of these fairy tales for adults was Mr. Rivera's daughter who asked where fairy tales came from and was told that people made them up and put them in books. ''Oh, '' she replied, ''then giants have us in their books.'' The plays that followed were written ''as if we were the subject of stories told by giants." FLOWERS: Lulu's acne must have some cosmic meaning, perhaps punishment for her vanity, but when the acne morphs into hibiscus flowers, she believes she is cursed. Her little brother, Beto, however, sees an "unearthly beauty" in the flowers. TAPE: If we suspected everything we said was being recorded, would we act differently? A TIGER IN CENTRAL PARK: A runaway tiger renders the island of Manhattan impotent. GAS: A man goes to a gas station to fill up his tank. The Gulf War has just started, and the man's brother is fighting in it. The gas comes out red. THE CROOKED CROSS: A high-school girl dons swastika earrings, given to her by her boyfriend, and finds that her life soon turns into a nightmare. THE WINGED MAN: A young girl bears the child of a fabled flying man. "José Rivera's GIANTS HAVE US IN THEIR BOOKS, is subtitled 'Six Children's Plays for Adults.' The genesis of the plays, he explains in a program note, was his four-year-old daughter's observation that, if we have giants in our fairy tales, they must have us in theirs. Rivera wrote the plays, he says, 'as if we were the subject of fairy tales told by giants.' It's an apt notion. The six short plays in GIANTS have all the beautiful simplicity of fairy tales ... Rivera's prose has become more concentrated and spare, more pregnant with metaphor and poetry. The profuse and sometimes self-consciously fantastical stew of magic realism - which, like his mentor, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rivera insists is just another form of everyday reality - has been condensed so that each image carries greater weight. The six short fables in GIANTS add up to two hours of compelling, entertaining and provocative theater." -Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Examiner

Set against the backdrop of Puerto Rico's struggle with the issue of statehood, a young woman, who speaks no Spanish, moves in with her 105-year-old great grandmother who speaks no English. Both women deal with problems of love - the younger with two new suitors and the older with the ghost of her husband's mistress. "... There is more - much, much more - to José Rivera's new play, ADORATION OF THE OLD WOMAN. But the play's internal engine - its life and humor and earthiness - is driven by the shockingly profane, deeply poetic words of this spiritual old woman. Doña Belen may be the most fascinating character in Rivera's fertile oeuvre ... his plays are infused with the flavor we've come to associate with Latin writing - the rich imagery and lyricism of Federico García Lorca, the earthy sensuality and surrealism of Gabriel García Márquez. But Rivera's concerns are universal. His characters may be brown-skinned, but his subject is the human soul. ADORATION OF THE OLD WOMAN is Rivera's most overtly political play yet. It's a work that combines Rivera's heightened sense of language and visually rich dreamscapes with a deeply felt probing of Puerto Rican independence. It's part ghost story, part political debate. It's magical realism meets a Puerto Rican Crossfire ... if Rivera never really seems to make his - the decision about Puerto Rican self-determination - he has left us with the evidence we need to make one for ourselves. And in that he fulfills what the physician-turned-playwright Anton Chekov said is the writer's chief responsibility: not providing a cure, but correctly diagnosing the problem." -Joel Beers, Orange County Weekly

In the Bolivian jungle, Che Guevara is captured and held in a one-room schoolhouse. For two days neither the Bolivian President nor the U.S. State Department is able to decide Che's fate. The young schoolteacher of the village insists that she be given permission to speak to the famous revolutionary. Her conversations with Che - based on historical fact - are the heart of the play. "José Rivera's SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS traces the last two days of the Argentine revolutionary's life. The story comes from historical fact: When a feckless attempt to start an insurrection in Bolivia led to his capture, Che really was held for two days in tiny La Higuera while authorities decided his fate and really did talk to a young villager named Julia Cortes. As imagined by Rivera, their conversations are sometimes predictable - America is 'the greatest enemy of mankind' - but also contain surprising introspection. Che calls himself 'a goddamn joke' and 'a small, failed, stupid man.' No doubt addressing the audience, he declares, 'Worship the struggle ... don't worship me.'" -Jeremy Carter, New York "... Mr Rivera's intimate play is something of a bookend to his screenplay for The Motorcycle Diaries, a coming-of-age movie about a young pre-political Che. In SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS politics serve only as a backdrop to a story about Che's encounter with a young teacher named Julia Cortes. Julia teaches at the schoolhouse where Che is being held, and after pleading with the Lieutenant to be let inside, she has a final conversation with the prisoner. Like COPENHAGEN and STUFF HAPPENS, this drama uses historical fact as a frame to pose intriguing questions about what might have happened ..." -Jason Zinoman, The New York Times

A wealthy woman invites two strangers to join her in a strange feast commemorating the death of her parents. Mayannah has done this every year but her dark purpose remains unclear. All that will change tonight when two damaged souls find their way to her table. Taking place in a not-so-distant future, the sounds of a war-torn Los Angeles fill the air. Tensions rise, true colors are revealed and the main course is not the only thing with claws…"… Rivera's teasingly engrossing stage reality … It's a return to the postapocalyptic landscape this most magical-realist of major American playwrights has explored in such compelling works as MARISOL and REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT, among his many plays … Rivera eschews external surreal symbols this time to delve directly into the chaos of his characters' disordered minds. The result is both an engrossing descent into the traumatized inner realms of three very different, isolated women … Each flight of concentrated poetry is vividly written … Rivera has created an intriguing and evocative drama with the social and psychological terrors that have leapt from the grottoes of the women's minds." -Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle"… This real-time drama … unfolds beautifully and offers great insight into how basic human nature desires can go bizarrely astray when the world is falling apart." -Giattina, San Francisco Bay Guardian

This collection includes twelve short and very short plays: CHARLOTTE, LIZZY, PAOLA AND ANDREA AT THE ALTAR OF WORDS, PHONE CALL IN THE RAIN, THE SHOWER, THE BOOK OF FISHES, YELLOW, THE FALL OF THE SPARROW, LESSONS FOR AN UNACCUSTOMED BRIDE, LOUISA, IMPACT, and SERMON FOR SENSES.Broadway Play Publishing Inc has published eight of José Rivera's full-length plays, including CLOUD TECTONICS and REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALÍ MAKE ME HOT.His screenplay for The Motorcycle Diaries was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, making him the first Puerto Rican writer to be nominated for an Academy Award.

"Remind[s] me that being scared at the theatre is fantastic." New York Post "MASSACRE is a brilliantly sustained banshee wail of madness." Vulture.com "Rivera is a poet who is also a clown, an American playwright whose dramas mingle our homegrown psychological naturalism with symbol-heavy European idea-drama and lush infusions of Latin American magic realism." Michael Feingold, The Village Voice "A deeply unsettling play." Curtain Up

A new collection by the author of Marisol and Other Plays.