Chilean Playwright Ximena Carrera Visits Animal Studies in Latin American Literature Class

This summer, Dr. Marin Laufenberg´s Spanish 6676 class, Animal Studies in Latin American Literature, is diving deep. They’ve spent the last few weeks of summer reading stories, poems, and texts from across Latin America that touch on human-animal relationships, how literature humanizes animals, and in turn, how some works bring out the animal in humans.

As a class, they have discussed Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga´s personification of serpents, Peruvian José Watanabe´s poems that elevate the oft-overlooked praying mantis, and the grotesque 19th century Argentine slaughter yard depicted by Esteban Echeverría. On July 17, the class had the opportunity to gather virtually and dialogue with Chilean playwright Ximena Carrera about her 2019 play, Greta, which depicts a family of women, their relationship with the sea, and in particular, the magnificent and mysterious mammals that inhabit it--whales. The central plot revolves around a beached whale that the women are compelled to save, despite the odds.

Carrera reminds us, “La gran mayoría de la gente no sabe qué pasa con las ballenas varadas.” (The great majority of people don´t know what happens to beached whales.) Carrera has woven together the theatrical, the mythological, the anthropological, and the scientific in this piece, teaching and delighting audiences simultaneously. Greta was inspired by a real-life whale. If you ever find yourself in Santiago, Chile, go to the Museum of Natural History, and hanging from the ceiling of the central hall you will see an immense skeleton. This sei whale skeleton is over 50 feet long and captivates museum-goers, many of whom have never seen the full size and magnitude of a whale up close and in real life before. The skeleton in the museum sparked Carrera to begin her story about Chile and cetaceans. But she also weaves in messages about matriarchal societies, the role of mothers, the pain and trauma of the disappearance of family members, and the importance of non-dominant forms of knowledge such as those inspired by the mythologies and legends of the indigenous groups of Chile.

According to the playwright, “Me gusta que no haya certezas.” (I like that there are no certainties.) In the end, Carrera hopes that her piece makes us feel something, makes us leave with questions about whales and about our relationship with them as human societies, and hopefully helps to promote the need to preserve all natural spaces of our world. We are all interconnected and, in this case, the theatre helps us to connect with the “more than human” or “non-human” animals that surround us.