Gracia plena
Detailed notes by Kristen McCleary
Full of Grace (a reference to Ave Maria, plena gracia)
Bambalinas
See photo in particular of main actress
Year two
Buenos Aires June 21, 1919
No. 63
Three acts
Debuted in the Teatro de la Opera by the Vittone Pomar company
June 6 1919
[Jose Gonzalez Castillo is the playwright
He is often described as an anarchist
What does that mean in the context of theater here?
He wrote the play about homosexuality, Los Invertidos, the inverted ones, which I write about elsewhere and can share.]
Note: this play has a lot of specific local dialect…slang—lunfardo.
Opens in a simple living room that has ‘female’ decoration—lots of flower patterns in the furniture. There is a big door and to the left we see a furnished dressing room, and beyond that, visible to the public is an elevator [maybe show a photo of what the elevators looked like—you could see into them] There is another room where there is a table and a lamp and men playing poker, four of them.
Mecha gets out of the elevator and goes into the dressing room where she takes off her gloves and hat. “It is so dark in here.” She opens window blinds. “Maria Theresa are you not capable of opening these yourself?”
MT: I went to do it, but some strange man was sleeping here. I don’t know who he is
Mecha: What were you hoping for, a convent? it is Ñato Perez. He sleeps wherever he can.
Juan Carlos: Hey, what is going on out there? Mecha, bring us some coffee!
Mecha: and Tony Rebollo and ‘la gallega’ where are they?
They wake up Nato, che/hey what time is it?
It is 7.
Am he asks?
No, 7 in the evening they tell him.
Nato: I meant to take a nap and ended up falling asleep. And you all have been at it for 21 hours! [poker/cards]
[Some dialogue about poker]
Maria Teresa is with Juan Carlos who is losing at cards and Nat0 teases them both. He tells MT that JC is in a foul mood because he is losing at poker
MT: when will this game finally end?
Nato: shrugs. Who knows. I might end up finishing up at the next tango vermouth hour.
M. Teresa comments that El Nato Perez’ wife is working in a cabaret to make 50 cents to pay for each drink her husband has and she is getting sick as a result of so much work. Nato replies, no she loves her work. She says that this is her way of drowning her sorrows and also she earns five or six pesos [duraznos] a day. This way she is a happy camper. If she did not do it, she would be a sad bird.
Nato: [aside] What does she want? That my wife work and “honest” job when there is a kid on the way.
Gutierrez enters
Nato: how is it going dotor?
Gutierrez: and Mecha, where is she?
Nato: have you come to take her away?
Gutierrez shrugs, suggesting yes.
Nato: are they going to put her in jail?
Gutierrez: for now no, but the parents of the minor are totally inflexible on this
Nato: What sentence is there for the crime against minors?
Gutierrez:
Around three years. The crime falls under Palacios’ law.
Nato: so sad, and just for helping out a friend
Gutierrez: From what I understand, they were services she ‘offered’
Nato: No, she is just pure gaucha. Nothing more
Gutierrez: Well these gaucha moves will come to someone’s attention and Mecha will lose her best tenant soon, Juan Carlos, as a result.
Nato; you are friends with Juan Carlos yes?
Gutierrez: for a little bit yes
Nato: Well, I am going to tell you something not to speak badly of anyone. But I think if JC finds out, he will help her ‘enter society’ you know what I mean?
Gutierrez: ?
Nato: and Tony knows that his woman is about to go to jail?
Gutierrez: Rebollo? He must know. Between the two of them [Mecha and Tony Rebollo] just exists physical attraction, nothing more. They hate each other nowadays but keep their lives together. It is a marriage that is an aberration, like so many others are…
Gutierrez: I am a doctor but not a physician. (they make a joke to him about their need to consult a doctor—emphasis on titles—doctor=someone who has a college degree)—maybe he is a lawyer
Nato: ah, perdone. Pardon me [with Italian accent] (Aside) Look how everyone is in the habit of referring to themselves as a doctor! And he talks just like a doctor writes. I cannot make head nor tail of him.
To the doctor: Goodbye doctor! (Aside) Don’t you see how often they use the word. Again!
Chau!
M. Theresa turns the corner and runs into Gutierrez, who asks her how her mood is.
MT: Ever since I tried to tell JC about my new state, he turns away from me and tries to avoid me. Last night he came in and just started playing poker. I have not been able to sleep.
Gutierrez: I will talk to him.
M. Theresa is pregnant and in love with Juan Carlos. She says she is not like the other women. “You know (to Gutierrez) I am resigned to this life because I want to be near the man I am in love with….” But ever since I found out I was going to be a mother, I have felt that I will do anything to protect this child. I look around and I see their faces. I feel like all of them, even his father, are going to try to do something to me and this child.
Maria Theresa:
“Juan Carlos promised me an honest roof in a tranquil place, a home. And look at this scandalous boarding house that we live in full of betting and tango music. He has also lured me into a life that I don’t want, that I suffer from and hate with my very being. Protect me doctor, I do not have the soul of a milonguera. [basically, of a prostitute]
Gutierrez:
You are a little upset right now. JC must think that the child will be a hindrance in this environment…
La Gata Mecha forms a couple with Tony Rebollo but they seem to be very bitter with one another.
Rebollo tells her she is getting old. She yells at him a bit and he says, You have to have a firm hand with to work this iron. Without hitting it, you get nowhere (soldering the iron reference)
[note that all of this discussion takes place with the preparation of yerba mate in the background. Rebollo gets mad because she has not boiled water for him]. A maid passes by and he flirts with her saying, bring me the mate pot and we can have this mate from Uruguay..[puts his arm around maid]
Rebollo to Mecha: the only one wearing pants in this house, is me.
Mecha: [calm but with disdain] right the great Tony Rebollo
Rebollo: gata! [cat a nickname for Mecha]
Mecha: right, go ahead acting like the big boss. You are a Murdrer, tanguero, devil, seducer of women. [they argue]
Mecha: shut up, you seducer of servants!
Rebollo: Oh she is jealous…
Mecha: Jealous? I don’t want to seem naïve in the face of someone who is truly naïve. You have always had a lot of money for your clothes and your habits have I ever once asked where it came from?
Rebollo: If someone walked by hearing all this from you they would have the false idea that you are some sort of saint.
Mecha: Don’t be a hypocrite. I will no longer be taken in by your tears. [with disdain] No one would believe that on such a man, I have wasted my youth.[she cries] What are you? A man who is a devil who lives off of women.
[maid returns with pot and yerba mate]
Rebollo: you are so bitter.
Maid: should I leave this here?
Rebollo: leave it there (points to Mecha)
[they argue more and he keeps yelling at the maid to prepare and serve him mate] [he yells at Mecha that she uses make-up to try to hide the fact that she is getting old…] and this is the real problem that you keep hanging onto me, getting old, and the payoff has never come in.
Mecha: [to the maid] get out of here!
Mecha: [on top of rebollo] it is over!
Rebollo grabs her by the waist, acts like he is hitting her, but doesn’t
The maid is afraid. Then he loses it: Mecha! What do I lose?
[maid leaves”
Mecha: what do you mean?
Juan Carlos, dr. Gutierrez, and the card players enter
M. Theresa: I am sorry the other day if I chose a bad moment to give you the news about the baby. But I am so happy to have your child. He will be beautiful. He will have your hair, wavy, his little eyes will be like mine, dark, his mouth will be like yours always making pucheritos.doesn’t this make you happy?
Juan Carlos: [ironically] sure, it’s really swell.
M. Theresa: you are saying this in a way….
J. Carlos: Think about what you do very carefully. It is the baby or me!
M. Theresa: What??
Rebollo hears what is going on: that canalla/bastard is killing her.
M. Theresa: I don’t believe you. Oh I get it, the father is already jealous of the son.
Rebollo: jealous? That’s a laugh. He is just worried he will no longer get any ‘affection.’
Others come in. Rebollo takes JC aside [don’t say anything, I will help you improve this situation—he tries to keep things light by laughing]
Mecha; Shut up Rebollo, this is no time for laughing
JC: well, can we get back to playing cards? Gutierrez agrees and he talks about how he will win
Mecha: but doctor, why did you not tell me you were here?
Gutierrez: there was not any hurry…
Rebollo: taking MT to the table, now get to work, while I prepare the yerba mate, you all work on light blue. Make some clothes for the little boy. They sit and M teresa is at first happy but then remembers something and is sad
G: (a mecha) they told you?
Mecha: yes, they made me sign
But I tell you dr. I am fed up, it is so unfair that at my age, I have to end up in a cell. The worse is that it is not jail. How the other women will enjoy their boarding house now
Rebollo: speech much of it to Maria teresa and then to Mecha:
we have worked in these boarding houses and cabarets for 20 years now. To MT: if you had seen Mecha back then, she was quite something to behold. Beautiful teeth and hair, come here Mecha (she goes to him crying and rests her head on his shoulder)
Sarita enters, carrying the key for the light: shall I turn it off? She makes jokes about the old couple, being so affectionate.
They separate and all get serious
Sarita: hey, who died here? [not realizing Mecha is going to jail, and MT is pregnant]
She makes a couple of unintended jokes and everyone gets mad at her.
Milton is with her he is quiet: don’t make me speak, he asks
Sarita: we were going to vermouth on Corrientes and ran into a friend…and stopped to chat. Of course, it was where we have our son being taken care of [with nuns] and he saw us. I stopped down from the sidewalk and he recognized me. And I in these clothes! The sisters started calling me but I just turned away and went to the cabaret. Then who comes to the cabaret but the man who tells me what a terrible mother I am for keeping him there, ignoring him. What can I do?
Milton: but this is what you are. You let weeks go by without seeing your kid. And today you could have kissed him but you didn’t and I saw his sad face as you walked away. …this is your problem, you don’t know how to feel anything or love anyone
Sarita: Well, if I feel something, you just deceive me with another woman. Now I am hard hearted to protect myself and I do not know how to be any other way. I am happy this way. I do not suffer.
Milton: and you this thing then are the mother of my child?
Sarita: Enough of you feigning to be so good. You deceived me about your inheritance, said it would support our child, and that is why I had him! And where is the inheritence??
[Basically Sarita works in a cabaret too. She was headed to the vermouth section [the first event or section of the night that begins at 6 pm], attired in her dance clothes it seems, she had passed by the school/convent where her kid was. He caught a glimpse of her but she ran away so as to not be seen so scantily clad by him. Milton says she is a bad mother who never spends time with her son. She says that she has gotten a harder heart but that she loves her son more than she does Milton. They argue and she says, what are you going to hit me, come on hit me, hit me.]
Rebollo separates them
S to Milton: the day you least expect it, I will disappear from here. I just have to ask and I will get an apartment of my own…
Rebollo imitates her habit of hitting down on things three times to make her point, he starts humming: May you get me an apartment, and take me to the Pigall [cabaret area to research] he starts dancing to the tango with La Gila.
La Gila: Isn’t petite suiss here? Or 30 mangoes?
Rebollo: wait for them if you want. They will be here soon. Vermouth must be ending about now.
Sarita to Gila: listen, take some advice. Continue with the sisters. Don’t enter the life of the milonga/milonguita
La Gila: But I like the nightlife better!
Petit Suisse and 30 Mangoes come in
Rebollo enters, she asks, what do you want?
He says: anything for 30 mangoes whatever she wants, and by the way, she will also pay for it.
30 mangoes is dressed very well-jokes are made about that is all he cares about. Milton adjusts his hat. 30 mangoes says, oh is that Mexican? He says, well, it is from Mexico Street (reference to Buenos aires shop/department store I think and also street)
30 mangoes: mine is authentic from Ghiseo. [not sure what this is]
Milton: He talks about his hat, which is not high quality but he says “this is James Smart. Well, it’s a knock off. Yours is from Ghiseo, it cost you 30 pesos, because well it’s you, and it is the same hat that Pancho Villa [Mexican revolutionary] wears, isn’t it. Leave, Leave, go compadrear /pretend to be a compadre somewhere else!
30 mangoes: and I just do not understand why everyone is always mad at me!
[he leaves to go with the women, Petit Suisse don’t leave without me!]
30 mangoes adjusts Petit Suisse’s clothes as if he were a tailor. [are we to understand that he is gay?—this would be a theme with other of the author’s plays] He tries to adjust her hat, but kind of is exasperated, Those criollos! He says
30mangoes: this Pamela hat is something else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_hat
How much have I spent on drinks trying to deceive you? When will you get me a French girl? When I saw you I said to myself, this girl is very pretty but she does not know how to dress. But then I see you wearing this hat as if it were attached to your head with a dirty piece of string.
Petit: okay okay
30 M: but this Pamela is something—Velvet from silk, and the ribbon is cheap, and the silk is two types. And that English cashmere, also cheap!
PS: I know!
30: and it would all be cheaper if we bought it by the yard. And your suit coat is okay but it is piled like with 30 pounds of weights attached to it
with so much weight on this thing, you look like you are in a scuba diving suit.
I want to show the seamstress how to fix this—she won’t charge much.
PS: how much?
30 M: 30 mangoes!
Sarita comes in looking at Petit Suisse: better, better, better.
Milton comes in and she laughs, comadreandole
Milton: you think this is good making me suffer?
Sarita: for me it is,
Milton: you will really disappear one day?
Sarita: ah, you believed me?
Milton: and you do not love me anymore?
Sarita: of course I do.
Who could not love this rich man!
Milton: totally tamed now. Don’t tease me don’t be fake. Give me a real kiss
Sarita: here take it (air kiss)
Milton: I wish you could learn how to love.
T. mangoes: just look at him. He is drooling
like a baby
Sarita calls down from the balcony:
Hey here comes la Borelli with Nato. He caught her at the movies
P. Suisse: He wasn’t at the movies. He was at Vermouth.
Sarita; he must have left early.
Milton. Of course if in the Majestic theater they actually showed the real La Bonelli or borelli. This? https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0096330/
Sarita: she works at the movies and lets us in.
30 mangoes: do you think we can go into the balcony?
They go in and hide. La Borelli enters imitating the moves of the famous movie actress. She sits on the chaise lounge in a ridiculous fashion. He says something to her
La Borelli: don’t scare me like that! Everyone left after vermouth and I had an hour hanging around without anyone buying me a drink. …
The others who are hiding crack up and laugh. El tano [short for Napolitano or Italian] enters with his bandoneon [tango instrument] and various musicians and people request a minloguita. He says to the crowd, are we in a mad house? Sarita is happy. El tano Felipe is here. The night is complete! Everyone makes a lot of noise, singing and dancing with the musicians.
Play something a tango, Sarita asks Felipe
Rebollo pulls felipe aside, Listen dude, today something happened with Mecha, Juan Carlos and Maria Theresa—a bad vibe came into the house. But with you comes in a little happiness even if it is fake, the happiness that we put on for awhile to forget the bad times, perhaps at the expense of a different kind of happiness. But today you play and we will all surprise Juan Carlos.
El tano: strong Italian accent, ne una parola mase
Rebollo: perfect! Maria T. you sit here, we will give Juan Carlos a big surprise. They are going to play for us! MT, try to look a little bit happy for once. The night life is coming to us!
Come here 30 mangoes, look at the tag on my coat:
30 mangoes?
It says Harrods.
30 mangoes: con leche!
Rebollo: 5 times 30 mangoes!
Sarita: what music! Those bandoneons. I am going to dance
Rebollo: that is a milonga full of soul.
Sarita: thank goodness. [taps her heels three times]
One lives a life without money but one lives. This is life. The milonga! Everything else is false. And here comes a tango. I am trembling. I feel the music from my toes to my head. It is like this, a caress, but none like any man has been able to give me.
It is the same feeling I had, the first time I heard a tango being sung in a cabaret, that lured me in. It almost makes me crazy like how crazy the throng of people get becomes when they hear the first notes of a tango being played, “Come on everyone, the Milonga is starting!”
Refer to this article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13569320600596967?needAccess=true
Stepping out of bounds: the tragedy of the milonguita in the tango-song
Hernán Feldman
Everyone except for mecha, MT and Rebollo dance. Juan carlos and the friends stop playing cards and come in. Rebollo signals JC to ask MT to dance, trying to get them to make up. MT is sad and hunches down into her chair. Sarita takes a hat and makes fun of MT as she dances
MT: stop it!
Rebollo interrupts—sarita bring that hat here
Milton dances with Sarita: what is going on why are you involved here?
Rebollo: Why are you getting involved? [they fight]
Mecha: has a pair of scissors—they are all fighting
MT gets the scissors
J Carlos tries to break up the skirmish—stop everyone!
T mangoes: oh my goodness. Are the police coming? They are sure to fine us 30 mangoes!
JC: MT all this is your fault but I will show you
MT: my fault?
JC: this music, play! [tango starts] he grabs the sewing box that is there and spillsout its contents. He shouts, from here on out this bulín/love nest will be a nursery! [everyone dances around with the baby’s clothes that were in the sewing box]
MT: this is a nightmare. Please stop it JC
JC: and this is a noodle/fideo
MT: for your son
JC: MY son?
MT: what it is not yours?
JC: well if it is my son, I want to hear it from your friend/comadre Mecha—may she come on over tonight.
MT: Why? This is ridiculous.
MT leaves horrified and JC follows her
Rebollo: and nobody does anything? You are all shameless. He runs to the left, there is a scream and afterwards a small fight is heard stage left
Rebollo: carrying MT, come with me. What a barbarian, kicking her? Savage!
Milton: reappearing, follwed by a few and showing the scissors, shouts) hey tony, she has taken out an eye. Everyone screams, j carlos comes out crazy bloody covering an eye. M teresa: oh poor soon of mine. I am so sorry. Forgive me![she falls to her knees]
Second scene
They list an entirely new cast for hs scene: sister superior, sisters of charit, nurses, doctor, emplyees of the house of foundling children
Opens up in a jail for women, Ave Maria the song plays as the scene opens.
Sister superior come in followed by prisoners.
There are call and response between the That is it for that scene.
Third Scene is in the infirmary of the women’s jail
Maria Theresa is in the room and an iron cradle is at the foot of her bed. She has had a baby. A boy. She is serving three years: the baby is recently born
Three years! For having punished the man who tried to disgrace me, who denied me the right to being reformed, who tried to make me denounce my own son. Does this seem fair to you, Mother?
The mother says that it was also because of the context that they were acting sinful in the middle of an orgy that she is being punished.
She gives an eloquent speech about redemption and motherhood.
Gata mecha is in there, too.
[it takes awhile to figure out why M. Teresa is there]
She seems “redeemable” where Mecha does not. Lots of discussion about what to do with Maria Theresa’s baby. There is a valorization of motherhood offered here. Her lawyer, Gutierrez, suggests that being a mother will redeem her. That they should not take the baby away. Sisters argue that other women there do not have their babies with them and it would not be fair to make this exception.
Gutierrez:
Because I have never believed that motherhood could be a scandal nor a crime and that is why I am not a moralist. Because that unhappy young woman, if she committed a crime, it was precisely to defend the fruit of her womb, and also because I believe someone can reform themselves, become redeemed from sin. What can redeem a woman is her own maternal love for a child.
The Physician: that is a bit sentimental way of looking at the things and it does not serve justice.
Gutierrez:
My criteria is not sentimental, it is human. Don’t suppress mothers [idea is that having a child will reform the mother] just to catch a few delinquents.
So what should we do? Sister superior says that while the mom serves her time baby should be sent to the orphanage.
Rebollo:
…it seems a little odd all of this. Because the father wanted to get rid of the baby before it was born, the mother took his eye out. She goes to jail and here, precisely, they would do what the father wanted with the end result that the one being punished is the child.
[They basically condemned the mom for taking out Juan Carlos’ eye as he is attacking her. Women are forced to work as prostitutes or live in places similar to brothels and then are punished for it.] [A bit of a socialist indictment of poverty.]
Rebollo also condemns all of the scientific studies about reforms [written by men]. How is this reform?
Two other women enter the infirmary. La Muñoz who is young and an older Italian woman. The young woman killed her husband and has six kids. The other older woman is Carolina –she threw two of her kids in the Riachuelo River and threw herself in too. They each got 25 years. La Muñoz was a victim of her motherhood. Disdained, abandoned, the home was for her a jail. [very interesting critique of social space]
Gutierrez: She killed her husband but it never occurred to her to kill her children or give them up. This other one, poor and neglected, preferred to sacrifice all of their lives before giving them up to charity or going to jail for robbing anyone. What does this mean? That there was another mother so neglected and that our barbaric society has turned her into a beast. This is the conclusion I have made from the stories of these women that you offer to me as an example of criminality.
Followed by the child of Maria Theresa being sent to orphanage while she is away briefly. Rebollo cries.
Gutierrez: I confess Dr. that this is the real crime, we are all still very barbaric although we call ourselves civilized….[Argentine history—Sarmiento here]
Mecha and rebollo see each other and reunite.
M teresa sees that her son is missing and there is a huge scene.
Sorry honey but the law says children cannot be raised in jail
Maria Theresa is frantic, crying and screaming:
I don’t want to live without my son. Why have they brought me here..to kill me, taking away my son, my only reason to live…
Gutierrez and Rebollo leave. Gutierrez says, every day I am more ashamed to be a man. Rbgollo and I brought this little doll for the baby, he leaves it on the bed. Last word: pobrecita….Poor young woman
Criticism:
La Montana
June 7, 1919
Provides a brief summary and says this play is about trying to protect the rights of mothers. The play was very well received. The authors were thanked by word and applause.
El diario espanol
June 12 1919
Agrees that the play is good and was well received: The action was sober but vigorous and the ambient well observed. The dialogue was a bit lurid at moments. It is reminiscent of the play, Los dientes del perro. The impression is of a depiction of true artistry and real life.
La Republica Sunday june 15, 1919
Says authors return to one of their themes about the need to defend women being abandoned and how laws do not help them. People accuse this play with having a lot in common with the play los dientes del perro. In both plays there is a cabaret and here a boarding house with questionable morality and where both sexes mingle, and dance. But they are different plays other than that and also giving exception to the fact that both defend women. GP is about a woman who becomes a criminal on her way to motherhood. Maria Esther Pomar, the actress, knows how to move people in a way the public is not used to seeing.
[la tribuna but check] June 14, 1919
In the play, the bad environment of the capital city, serves to remind the audience about the unjust law that separates woman and child in the case that the mother commits a crime. The audience laughed a lot at the firs scene which was full of character types, and were moved to tears in the following scene. The play is offered during the Vermouth, first and last sections at the theater.
Idea nacional june 21, 1919
This is a didactic and moralizing play. It exposes a social plague and an incongruity of the law and asks to remedy the situation. Authors ask justice for the poor mothers of the milonga. The first scene predisposes us to not like the play since it takes places in these so called boarding houses which are filled with vice and corruption. The play shows all of this clearly. Men gamble and women “sing” and act out their vices. The play tries to argue that one woman will be redeemed by motherhood. But no. These type of women have no right to be mothers. At least that is how the father (Juan Carlos) and all of his friends think. The final scene presents the play’s didactic nature most clearly, it is sociological, to separate a mother from her child in order to punish the mother is entirely absurd, the worst idea that the human mind might conceive of.