Constructing Multiple Realities on Stage: Conceiving a Magical Realist Production of Jose Rivera's Cloud Tectonics

by Mellas, Michael John

Can love survive in a broken, fractured world? What is the nature of this love? These are the primary questions Jose Rivera asks in his play Cloud Tectonics, a three-character love-story. This thesis will catalogue a magical realist conception of Cloud Tectonics. It will explore the multiplicity of perspective inherent in and the dualistic nature of a magical realist world. Guided by the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Lois Parkinson Zamora, it will examine this world's political and cultural implications. This thesis will also use catharsis to combine the representational theatrical worlds of Uta Hagen and Stanford Meisner with the presentational worlds of Jerzy Grotowski and Anne Bogart in production. This thesis will explore these issues from a historical and theoretical perspective, into the creation and implementation of a production concept, and culminate in the production of Cloud Tectonics as part of the Department of Theatre's 2007-08 season.