The House of the Spirits/La Casa de los Espiritus
By Caridad Svich
Themes: Female Empowerment, Socio-economic class, Politics & Corruption
Genre: Adaptation, drama, magical realism
Key Scenes: Act 1, Scene 15 (5F, 3M); Act 3 Scene 27 (3F, 1M); Act 4 Scene 34 (3F, 1M)
Number of characters: 11 (7F, 6M)
Age recommendation: 16+ (violence, sexual violence including rape, and sexual content)
Region: Latin America
Original language(s): Spanish & English
DESCRIPTION
Based on the novel by Isabel Allende, Caridad Svich’s play charts the rise and fall of the Trueba family from the perspective of its women in an unnamed Latin American country. The play spans the 1920s to the 1970s as the country moves through enormous socio-political changes that culminates in a devastating dictatorship. The play charts the conflicted rags to riches rise of stubborn patriarch Esteban Trueba, which is contrasted with the interior and exterior worlds of the grandmother Clara, the mother, Rosa the Beautiful, and the daughter, Alba, as they navigate their lives in the shadow of gender and state violence.
Told from the sensorial point of view of the youngest of the three generations of women, the play opens with Alba in a government torture room. The swirling memories, frightening and amusing, lyrical and fantastic, illuminate the stage as Alba records her family’s history and ultimately finds the strength to recover her own story.
The play was written in both Spanish and English versions.
+ DETAILS
Author: Caridad Svich
Original language: Spanish
Publisher: Theatre Department at the University of California, San Francisco
World Premiere (in the Engl. lang.): University of California, San Francisco, 2011
Education Pack Resource Writer: Alia Alzougbi
+ CHARACTERS
ALBA (live and mediated), witness to history (on stage throughout)
CLARA, her grandmother, a seer
ROSA THE BEAUTIFUL, her aunt (live and mediated); also plays BLANCA, her mother [actor in her 20s]
ESTEBAN TRUEBA, her grandfather, the patriarch
ESTEBAN GARCIA, Esteban Trueba‟s bastard son, a colonel (live and mediated)
CHORUS (women of the city, women of the country):
PANCHA, peasant girl; also plays WOMAN 1
NIVEA, Alba‟s great-grandmother; also plays WOMAN 2
FERULA, Esteban Trueba‟s sister; also plays COUNT OF SATIGNY, Blanca's suitor, a dandy, and WOMAN 3
TRANSITO SOTO, a prostitute
SEVERO, her great-grandfather; also plays PEDRO GARCIA, foreman of the Three Marias ranch, and FATHER ANTONIO, a priest, and MAN ONE PEDRO TERCERO, Alba's father, field hand, revolutionary, singer; also plays GUARD, and BARABBAS, Clara’s dog (a puppet)
