Selected Plays by Cuban Playwright Abel González Melo

Book excerpt: "One of Cuba's most important contemporary playwrights, Abel González Melo is known for a hybrid poetics in which he employs contemporary formal features, such as non-linear storytelling and flashbacks, interwoven with elements from the classical tradition in order to stage the ignoble realities of postmodern life. " (Lillian Manzor, University of Miami) Born in Havana in 1980, Abel González Melo is a rare example of a contemporary Cuban playwright whose work is performed and celebrated not only in Cuba, but also in the US, the Americas more widely, Europe, and beyond. Investigating a raft of national and universal themes, such as queer sexuality, the dilemma of leaving or remaining, political power and censorship, family dynamics, the ambition and responsibility of the artist, and so-called 'cancel culture', González Melo's work is international and universal in scope. The result of a 20-year collaboration with translator William Gregory, this collection of six plays surveys González Melo's eclectic two-decade career: from his beginning with earlier works exploring the pulsing underworld of early-2000s Havana in Chamaco and Nevada, through to his most recent takes on theatre and its intersection with contemporary issues in Tell Me the Whole Thing Again and Abyss. Complete with an edited introduction by Ernesto Fundora and a translator's note from Gregory, Selected Plays by Cuban Playwright Abel González Melo explores not only González Melo's oeuvre but also his distinctive stylistic and aesthetic variety, gained from living in both Spain and Cuba.