Latin American Theatre Review

Not the Time to Stay is an anthology featuring eight unpublished plays by Puerto Rican writer and scholar Víctor Fragoso. His theatre remains somewhat elusive to the cultural canon of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the US in spite of his active role in the emergence of a Latino cultural scene in New York City and New Jersey during the 1970s. Fragoso's seemingly unknown skill as a playwright inspires Consuelo Martínez-Reyes, editor and translator, "to set a basis from which to explore his works further" (24). Readers of this collection can expect to find background information on Fragoso's personal life as well as a description of the themes, styles, and obsessions of his theatre in an introduction written by Martínez-Reyes. Although any process of translation grapples with an inevitable loss of meaning, the translator carefully captures the playwright's playfulness with language. These twists and turns show [End Page 156] evidence of a shrewd writing style that portrays the struggles of a collective identity in search of meaning amidst its recurrent displacement and marginalization. Fragoso's aesthetic deployment of social realism, as in "Undecided, from Carey," "Newark, 1974," or "First Night Out," focuses on themes like violence against women, Puerto Rican protests in the 70s, and female homelessness, while revealing the playwright's positionality toward social justice issues. Aware of his condition as a gay Puerto Rican, Fragoso's plays tackle the contradictions of heterosexuality as a mode of belonging, especially when depicting a double standard that binds women to violent mistreatment in the name of religious mores. Paired with an obsession with musicals, his critical lens on social issues related to Puerto Ricans and Latinos in the US compels him to rework the nostalgia inherent to diaspora. For instance, in "Santaclos in Boriken," Fragoso offers a comic revision of the Spanish Caribbean stereotypes that form part of the US nationalist imaginary, while in "The Latino Era," co-written with Dolores Prida, Fragoso offers a critique of mainstream Broadway and its exclusion of Latino theater, echoing what Chicano gay playwright Ricardo Bracho has called "golden-balled privilege." "Call My Number" stands out for its histrionic lyricism and affectivity in an evocation of poet Julia de Burgos' life, recast as an epitome of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Fragoso's iteration of the absurd is vividly present in "Not the Time to Stay" and "Don't Get Nervous," both of which prompt an undeniable connection with the work of José Triana, Bertolt Brecht, and Antonin Artaud in the use of psychological thrills, minimalist staging, and violence. Throughout, elements of code-switching, specifically the presence of Spanglish, are central to approaching Víctor Fragoso's theater. In this line of thought, a bilingual edition of his plays would have been optimal in repositioning his creative use of language and further an understanding of his legacy within the vast genealogy of Latinx American theater.