Criticizing Performance/Performing Criticism: Calvert Casey’s role on the Cultural Field of the Cuban Revolution

• In Event: ¿Figuras incómodas?: Padilla, Casey, Lezama

Abstract

In 2019 we will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Cuban American writer Calver Casey's death (1923-1969), a very active agent in the thriving cultural life of Havana in the 1960’s. Even though his fiction is scarce, he became a cult writer of sorts. The bibliography on his fiction is extensive, mainly because of the controversial nature of his writing, in which death and homoerotic desire loom large. Even though his production of theater reviews surpasses that of his fiction, there is no research on Casey as a theater critic. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, there was a boom in theater productions and publications supported by the state, and theater became a site of conflict where new and old ideas were tested and questioned. Since 1959 Casey published regularly in several Cuban periodicals, reviewing theater productions, performances and texts. He continued publishing reviews until he left Cuba in 1965.
My research focuses on the more than 300 reviews and critical essays Casey published on theater in Cuban periodicals (La calle, Diario de la tarde, Lunes de Revolución, Bohemia, etc.) Thanks to his modern perspective on the performing arts, informed by his knowledge of US and European theaters, he played an important role in the construction of the theatrical cannon of the Revolution. In my presentation I will discuss how these reviews let us understand Casey’s strategies as a cultural agent, elucidating his unsuccessful struggle to hold a position in the Cuban cultural field in the 1960’s.

Author

• Diego Del Pozo, Towson University