Eréndira

The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira
and her Heartless Grandmother
by Gabriel García Márquez
Adapted, Directed and Choreographed
by Monica Payne

Scenic Design – Hana Kim
Costume Design – Laura Wong
Lighting Design – Pablo Santiago-Brandwein
Sound Design – David Crawford

Produced at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television (2011)

Director’s Note
Gabriel García Márquez’s lyrical, imaginative and magical writing has been captivating audiences around the world for many decades. Having begun his career as a journalist, he went on to write prolifically and emerged as a driving force in the literary genre known as magical realism. Most famous for novels like Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude, he is also the author of a myriad of short stories, a memoir, and a book for children. His status as one of the preeminent Latin American writers and a Nobel Prize winner means he continues to have great weight as a cultural figure

García Márquez spent the early part of his life in Colombia, experiencing firsthand La Violencia, a period of civil conflict which threw the country into turmoil in 1948, and from which it has yet to recover. Most of his writing is set there, and though he now lives in Mexico, he still retains a great consciousness of his homeland and continually writes evocatively of what it means to be Colombian. In his work, the reader will find political allegory, passion, true love, birth, death, and occasionally, a Dutch boy with angel wings…

The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother was written in 1972 and is a novella in its original form. I’d like to extend my gratitude to Gabriel García Márquez and his literary agency in Barcelona for graciously granting permission for me to adapt the story to the stage.