“Remedios para Leonora” by Estela Leñero

Remedios for Leonora, by Estela Leñero, is showing at the Círculo Teatral in Condesa. México, from July 13 until August 31 under the direction of Gema Aparicio.

Cast: Gabriela Betancourt and Diana Sedano

The play evokes the imagined lives of two surrealist artists: Remedios Varo (1908-1963) and Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Leonora has conjured up Remedios and now they find themselves within a dream from which they are trying to escape. In their search for a way out they relive moments from the past which confirm their friendship or return to experiences of insanity and exile. They also come across characters who torment them. In order to escape danger, they devise incantations and mind games, but finally, they realize that the space they occupy is more closely related to death than to life.

Prior to their convergence in Mexico City, the women relive moments from their past. Leonora, born in Lancashire, England, appears with Max Ernst, the love of her life and 27 years her senior. In 1939, while living with Ernst, she is forced to flee France. In Spain, her father checks her into a psychiatric hospital, from which she escapes in 1941. She arrives in Lisbon, Portugal and at the Mexican Embassy she meets Mexican writer Renato Leduc. They get married and move to Mexico in 1942.

Remedios, surrealist painter and anarchist, finds herself trapped in Spain during the Civil War. During that period (1936-1939) she meets the poet Benjamín Péret and they move to Paris. In 1941, however, the presence of the Germans in France force them to leave the country and seek asylum in Mexico. They part ways in 1947; he returns to France and Remedios goes to Venezuela. She returns to Mexico in 1949 where she meets and marries Walter Gruen, and Austrian politician. She establishes close ties with artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahloas well as Leonora Carrington.

For a review of the play go to: http://carteleradeteatro.mx/2016/remedios-para-leonora-una-amistad-que-converge-en-el-arte/