Laura Derpic Burgos
I, Penelope
Greek translation: Leandros Polenakis
Directed by Nikos Chatzipapas
Summary
Laura Derpic Burgos imaginatively subverts the myth of Odysseus’ return to Ithaca and to his faithful wife, Penelope, portraying her instead as a woman that is mature, questioning and unpredictable; one whose psyche is transformed into a symbol of boldness and freedom by time, silence, absence, hope and the agony of waiting.
Extract
Yet what should I do with all the hope I carry in me. Now, that Odysseus is back… I feel as if I never have felt anything. Instead of rejoicing and crying now that he has returned, I find myself constantly thinking that our love perhaps was nothing more than an illusion. A fabrication: one that saw each of us fill the void of the other’s absence with whatever we had at our disposal. We idealized that partner who was no longer by our side.
Laura Ivana Derpic Burgos was born in Potosi, Bolivia, in 1984. She completed her master’s degree at the Department of Theatre Creation at the Carlos III University of Madrid. She works as a playwright and enjoys exploring every single word as virgin territory, one that eventually will become the source of some new reality. Burgos is also keen on rewriting myths, a further attempt to explore the limits of language. Throughout her work, Burgos offers a critique of the political and religious debates in Bolivia. She is also interested in combining theatre with many other art forms and has also collaboratively written plays. Burgos is widely recognized in her country and several of her plays have been published there. She currently teaches playwriting at the University of Mayor de San Andres, and scriptwriting at the Andina de Cine School, both based in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.