INoticias.CL | Santiago’s «Neo Gabriela» Revives Nobel Laureate Teacher, Bringing Her to the 21st Century

«I can’t believe it! It worked! Your face, your hands, Gabriela, all of you, my dearest!» exclaims Consuelo as her wishes come true. The woman reconnects with Gabriela Mistral, who returns to the present as a vibrant twenty-something. And she doesn’t land just anywhere; she appears in a ghostly form at a lesbian bar, where plans are underway to write, or rather, rewrite her story in a theatrical production.

This is the essence of Neo Gabriela, the new play by playwright Rae del Cerro (Pam Berry, Before I Die, I Want to Meet Heaven), co-written with author Violeta Escribiendo. It features actresses Daniela López and Coca Miranda, alongside special guest musician Horridia Parra.

The performance is scheduled for July 8, 9, 10, 15, 17, and 18 at 7:30 PM at Teatro Camilo Henríquez in Santiago.

The play fuses word and music to offer a critical and emotional reinterpretation of Mistral from a dissenting perspective. As the authors state, «Neo Gabriela arises from the desire to interrogate how Chile has managed the image of Gabriela Mistral, detaching her work from her emotional life, her desires, and the lesbian readings that have been overlooked or treated as uncomfortable facts for decades.»

A Mistral in Constant Dispute

In their quest for writing and rewriting, the characters aim to challenge the constructed imagery surrounding Mistral as well as her history and representation. This unfolds in the protagonists’ narratives and the metatheatrical exercise of crafting a play.

As the creators indicate, this choice «allows us to show that Mistral is not a closed or placated figure but a field of ongoing dispute: an author who is read, utilized, monumentalized, and yet often stripped of her political, erotic, and vital complexities.»

This new approach, which seeks to disrupt the official narrative of Mistral, is also presented in a humorous and musical format. Both elements, the creators add, «open a profound discussion without solemnity: humor serves as a form of dislocation against the official narrative, while music activates an emotional and popular dimension from which to reimagine Gabriela.»

The Reckoning for Chile

Mistral exists in her texts but also in her image as represented by official history: the 5,000 peso bill, the busts in public squares, and new sculptural works in her honor. She also encounters erasure as a constant contradiction. «Chile treated you like absolute trash, just as it did with all women writers. They never deserved you, Gabriela. They never did,» they tell her.

In this regard, the reclamation and rewriting of Mistral, explain Violeta Escribiendo and Rae del Cerro, «does not aim to establish a new definitive truth about the poet, but rather to open a space for critical imagination: to ask what happens when Gabriela ceases to be merely a monument, a banknote, or a national emblem, and returns as an uneasy, desirous, contradictory, and vibrant presence.»

«Gabi, Gabriela Mistral was rural, she was lesbian,» sings one of the songs from Horregias, of which Rae del Cerro is a co-founder. This time, the premise is rooted in the poet herself, directly challenged on stage.

«Don’t be afraid of the word lesbian,» they tell her; «poetry can be the best hiding place in the world,» they sing. To which she responds: «I use the masculine form of lesbian and not necessarily that of man.»

Regarding this visibility exercise, the playwrights explain that they sought to approach Mistral «from a lesbian reading that doesn’t operate as a reductive label but as a political and emotional possibility to reread her work, her relationships, her silences, and the ways in which the canon has attempted to impose order on what transcends those limits.»

Details

Neo Gabriela will be performed on July 8, 9, 10, 15, 17, and 18 at 7:30 PM at Teatro Camilo Henríquez, located at Amunátegui 31, Santiago Centro (Metro Moneda). Tickets are available through Ticketplus.