Three Plays: The Young Lady from Tacna, Kathie and the Hippopotamus, La Chunga by Mario Vargas Llosa Page A
Authors: Mario Vargas Llosa
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us to our normal state, we find we have changed, that we are more aware of our limitations, more eager for fantasy and less ready to accept the status quo.
This is what happens to the main characters in Kathie and the Hippopotamus , the banker’s wife and the writer in the little attic room where the play is set. When I wrote it, I didn’t even know that its underlying theme was the relationship between life and art; this particular alchemy fascinates me because the more I practise it the less I understand it. My intention was to write a farce, by pushing the characters to the point of unreality (but not beyond because total unreality is boring), taking as a starting point a situation that had been haunting me for some time: a lady employs a writer to help her compose an adventure story. She is, at this point, a pathetic creature in so far as art for her seems to be a last resort against a life of failure; he is unable to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t Victor Hugo whose abundant personality he admires in all its many aspects: the romantic, the literary, the political,
and the sexual. During their working sessions and arising from the transformations the story itself undergoes between what Kathie dictates and what her amanuensis writes down, their respective lives, both the real and imaginary sides of them, that is, what they actually were and what they would have liked to have been – are acted out on stage, summoned together by memory, desire, fantasy, association and chance. At some point during my work on the play, I noticed beside the ghosts of Kathie and Santiago, who I was trying to breathe life into, other little ghosts queuing up behind them, waiting to earn their rightful place in the play. Now when I discover them, I recognize them, and am once again quite astounded. Santiago’s and Kathie’s fantasies, quite apart from their real lives, in many ways reveal my own, and the same is no doubt true of anyone who puts on display that crude mass of raw material out of which he fashions his fiction.
Mario Vargas Llosa
CHARACTERS
KATHIE KENNETY
SANTIAGO ZAVALA
ANA DE ZAVALA
JUAN
The action takes place some time in the 1960s in Kathie Kennety’s ‘Parisian attic’.
SET, COSTUME, EFFECTS
Kathie Kennety’s ‘little Parisian attic’ is not a caricature: it has that air of permanence and authenticity about it as if it were a real place.
Kathie, a woman with a sense of taste, has furnished her ‘studio’ in an attractive manner, reminiscent of the sort of artist’s garret one finds in pictures, novels, postcards and films; it also has something of the genuine chambres de bonne where students and impoverished foreigners congregate on the left bank of the Seine.
Under the sloping ceiling, there are ageing beams; on the walls, posters of the ubiquitous Eiffel Tower, the inevitable Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, some Impressionist paintings, a Picasso, and – one essential detail – a portrait or bust of Victor Hugo. There is nothing of great elegance, nothing superfluous, just what is necessary to give an impression of comfort and warmth: a little retreat where the occupant can feel safe and protected from the turmoil and scrutiny of the outside world, free to conjure up her innermost demons and confront them face to face. There is a thick wooden desk, a broad delapidated sofa, covered all over with rugs, some cushions on the floor, the tape-recorder and the typewriter, a small record-placer, the usual records of Juliette Greco, Léo Ferré, Yves Montand, Georges Brassens, etc. Filing cabinets, notebooks, papers and some books, but not too many, because Kathie’s idea of culture has little to do with literature.
There is nothing special or unusual about what Kathie or Santiago wear. The story takes place some time in the 1960s and this can be indicated in the way they dress. Santiago’s clothes reflect the modest salary and the hectic life of a journalist and lecturer, and it would not
This is what happens to the main characters in Kathie and the Hippopotamus , the banker’s wife and the writer in the little attic room where the play is set. When I wrote it, I didn’t even know that its underlying theme was the relationship between life and art; this particular alchemy fascinates me because the more I practise it the less I understand it. My intention was to write a farce, by pushing the characters to the point of unreality (but not beyond because total unreality is boring), taking as a starting point a situation that had been haunting me for some time: a lady employs a writer to help her compose an adventure story. She is, at this point, a pathetic creature in so far as art for her seems to be a last resort against a life of failure; he is unable to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t Victor Hugo whose abundant personality he admires in all its many aspects: the romantic, the literary, the political,
and the sexual. During their working sessions and arising from the transformations the story itself undergoes between what Kathie dictates and what her amanuensis writes down, their respective lives, both the real and imaginary sides of them, that is, what they actually were and what they would have liked to have been – are acted out on stage, summoned together by memory, desire, fantasy, association and chance. At some point during my work on the play, I noticed beside the ghosts of Kathie and Santiago, who I was trying to breathe life into, other little ghosts queuing up behind them, waiting to earn their rightful place in the play. Now when I discover them, I recognize them, and am once again quite astounded. Santiago’s and Kathie’s fantasies, quite apart from their real lives, in many ways reveal my own, and the same is no doubt true of anyone who puts on display that crude mass of raw material out of which he fashions his fiction.
Mario Vargas Llosa
CHARACTERS
KATHIE KENNETY
SANTIAGO ZAVALA
ANA DE ZAVALA
JUAN
The action takes place some time in the 1960s in Kathie Kennety’s ‘Parisian attic’.
SET, COSTUME, EFFECTS
Kathie Kennety’s ‘little Parisian attic’ is not a caricature: it has that air of permanence and authenticity about it as if it were a real place.
Kathie, a woman with a sense of taste, has furnished her ‘studio’ in an attractive manner, reminiscent of the sort of artist’s garret one finds in pictures, novels, postcards and films; it also has something of the genuine chambres de bonne where students and impoverished foreigners congregate on the left bank of the Seine.
Under the sloping ceiling, there are ageing beams; on the walls, posters of the ubiquitous Eiffel Tower, the inevitable Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, some Impressionist paintings, a Picasso, and – one essential detail – a portrait or bust of Victor Hugo. There is nothing of great elegance, nothing superfluous, just what is necessary to give an impression of comfort and warmth: a little retreat where the occupant can feel safe and protected from the turmoil and scrutiny of the outside world, free to conjure up her innermost demons and confront them face to face. There is a thick wooden desk, a broad delapidated sofa, covered all over with rugs, some cushions on the floor, the tape-recorder and the typewriter, a small record-placer, the usual records of Juliette Greco, Léo Ferré, Yves Montand, Georges Brassens, etc. Filing cabinets, notebooks, papers and some books, but not too many, because Kathie’s idea of culture has little to do with literature.
There is nothing special or unusual about what Kathie or Santiago wear. The story takes place some time in the 1960s and this can be indicated in the way they dress. Santiago’s clothes reflect the modest salary and the hectic life of a journalist and lecturer, and it would not
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