EL LECTOR POR HORAS (José Sanchis Sinisterra)

Premiered 1999 Teatre Nacional de Catalunya

Madrid premiere 9 April 1999 Teatro María Guerrero

Complicate play as infer in the title. Play based on intertextuality (reference to other texts)

One person reads and other listens but this is the beginning of several unexpected consequences.

Connected to Reception Theory:

Wolfgang Iser: “Literary text is an open text”

Sender-message-recipient

Text - reader (mediator) – recipient

Lector por horas: Text – reader – receptor – extends to audience

Classical structure Theatre

1) Planteamiento 2) nudo 3) desenlace

Structure El lector por horas according to S. Garnelo Merayo

XVII scenes remind us of chapters, most of them brief, in a novel

 “fase de despegue” (take off) reader/spectator moves from real space to the fictional
 “fase de cooperación” Receptor main protagonist since s/he has to fill empty spaces of
narration and answer questions about action on stage
 “fase de mutación” Solution to questions, expectations. Idea of homework after the play

Texts read are flashes that spectator will have to make sense

Juan Mayorga:

Como en la vida, el espectador de El lector por horas presencia acciones fracturadas, escucha retazos
de diálogos. El espectador ha de convertir esos jirones en piezas de un relato. Es el espectador quien
concluye la escritura, quien convierte en obra el fragmento al completar con su propia experiencia
los munones que le ofrece la escena. En El lector por horas, como en la vida, es el observador el que
crea el sentido (Intro Ay, Carmela-Lector por horas, Espasa-Calpe, pg. 55)

Many references to death. Intertextual references to several texts:

Il Gattopardo by Lampedusa, decadence of nobility; end of an era

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (blindness but also moving forward towards the unknown)
Reference to Madame Bovary, Flaubert: suicide of the protagonist. Escapism through reading of the
protagonist. Escape from reality. Unable to cope reality versus desire and commits suicide

Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo: city of ghosts

As I lay dying by William Faulkner

Texts are part of the plot

Classic theatre Unit of time and space. In El lector por horas only unity of space. Use of ellipsis.

Unity of time elliptical. Logical-chronological = always moves forward but many empty times (not
entire reading of the texts). No references to time, only number of books. Several months.

Three characters and some off-stage references (dead mother of Lorena)

Celso – facilitates the action

Ismael (hero/ subject). Personaje fronterizo = marginalized character

Lorena (object) Is this a traditional view of women. Why?

Blindness of the feminine character

Power relations:

Sanchis Sinisterra (Espasa-Calpe, p. 64): La política es una enfermiza obsesión por negar la
interpretación subjectiva del individuo, y el teatro debe devolver al individuo […] la capacidad
interpretativa, deductiva, analítica, sensitiva y emocional.

Protagonist in the end is the audience. Fractured action, characters and dialogs reflection of
audience own life. According to Garnelo Merayo: El lector por horas asks the following questions:

1) Why we project ourselves in our readings?

2) Why we feel that what we read is part of our lives?
3) Reading influences our behaviour?

Connection between Literature and Life

Further reading: Ay, Carmela/El lector por horas. Intro. Eduardo Pérez Rasilla. Ed. Austral pages 54-
76

And “la estética de la recepción según Sanchis Sinisterra: El lector por horas” by Saúl Garnelo
Merayo , available through Learn