About this Event
The Drama Book Shop presents, in association with Jay Michaels Global Communications, My Excellency: William Carlos Williams’s “Lost” Translation of Luis Rechani Agrait’s Masterpiece — With Jonathan Cohen & Gy Mirano — A Talkback, signing and live podcast recording.
About the Play
My Excellency is a political farce set in an “imaginary country” that resembles Puerto Rico during the Great Depression. The play focuses on the plight of an idealistic but naive man, Buenaventura Padilla, in a completely corrupt political system, who through an unscrupulous election becomes the nation’s leader. The play is successful as a satire largely because of Buenaventura’s hilarious language — recreated by William Carlos Williams — with its pompous style combined with stunning malapropisms and clownish errors in history and grammar. The play’s very title is a laughable malapropism. My Excellency shows the corrupting power of success and the tragic flaw of materialism. Driving the comedy in Williams’s translation is his firm command of the play’s dialogue interwoven with popular idioms in which the charm of pure nonsense abounds.
About the Author
Luis Rechani Agrait (1902–1994) is one of Puerto Rico’s major dramatists of the twentieth century. A journalist, poet, short-story writer, and playwright, he was known largely as a journalist when Mi Señoría (My Excellency) was first produced in 1940 at the University of Puerto Rico. His first play to be staged, it combined both his diverse writing background and long concern with social and historical issues. He had spent several prior years living in the United States while attending first Harvard and then the University of Richmond. When he returned to Puerto Rico, he worked for the daily paper El Mundo as editor in chief. Public matters were the primary focus of his attention. He left the paper after a couple of years to work in the Department of Public Instruction as assistant to the commissioner. During this period he published two books for children: a reader, Páginas de Color de Rosa (Heath, 1928; Rose-Colored Pages), and a book of poems with fellow poet Rafael Rivera Otero, Una Nube en el Viento (Los autores, 1929; A Cloud in the Wind). In 1930 he returned to El Mundo and worked there over the next decade, during which he published several short stories, most appearing in the weekly magazine Puerto Rico Ilustrado, which was delivered as an insert in El Mundo.
Stimulated by the activity in Puerto Rican theater in the late 1930s, Rechani resumed writing drama, following his previous efforts, which had resulted in two unpublished comedies: “Contra la Vida” (1926; Against Life) and “Tu Mujer No Te Engaña” (1934; Your Wife Doesn’t Cheat on You). He wrote Mi Señoría (Puerto Rico Ilustrado, 1940; My Excellency) in 1937. Three years later he brought the play to the attention of a new theater company that had formed to produce experimental theater in search of a national identity, the first company on the island dedicated to a vital dramaturgy of genuine national character. Called the Sociedad Dramática Areyto (Areyto Dramatic Society) after the name given to the dramatic tribal dance of Puerto Rico’s native people, the company emphasized the need to create Puerto Rican characters, situations, and landscapes for the stage. Mi Señoría fit the bill perfectly and Areyto produced it. The play, which was among the company’s first productions, was a great success, and it has enjoyed three acclaimed revivals in Puerto Ricao, in 1959, 1966, and 2010.
Rechani continued to write celebrated plays, including Todos los Ruiseñores Cantan (1964; All the Nightingales Sing), ¿Cómo Se Llama Esta Flor? (1965; What’s This Flower’s Name?), Tres Piraguas en un Día de Calor (1970; Three Snow Cones on a Hot Day), Llora en el Atardecer la Fuente (1971; At Sunset the Fountain Weeps), ¡Oh, Dorada Ilusión de Alas Abiertas! (1978; Oh, Golden Illusion of Open Wings!), and El Extraño Caso del Señor Oblomós (1981; The Strange Case of Mr. Oblomos)—collected with Mi Señoría in Teatro de Luis Rechani Agrait (Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1991).
About the Translator
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) is one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century and an influential founder of literary modernism. In addition to poetry, he authored works of fiction, criticism, drama, and translation. His importance to the development of modern American poetry grew out of his commitment to recording the “local” experience of Rutherford, New Jersey, and its environs, where he was born and raised, and where he later settled and practiced medicine as a pediatrician and obstetrician. Among his most celebrated books are Al Que Quiere! (Four Seas, 1917), Spring and All (Contact, 1923; cited by the Library of Congress as one of the eighty-eight “Books That Shaped America”), In the American Grain (Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), Paterson (Books I–V; New Directions, 1946−58), and Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (New Directions, 1962), for which he posthumously received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Williams translated poetry and fiction from both Spanish and French, as well as poetry from classical Greek and classical Chinese. His lost translation from Spanish of Lope de Vega’s Golden Age verse play El Nuevo Mundo Descubierto por Cristóbal Colón (The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus) was made around 1914. His brilliant translation of Mi Señoría showcases the dramatist in him. He translated it during the period he was working on Many Loves (originally called “Trial Horse No. 1”), his most successful play, which ran for nearly a year at the off-Broadway Living Theatre in 1959. His collected dramatic works appear in Many Loves and Other Plays (New Directions, 1961), which includes four full-length playscripts and the libretto of his opera on George Washington. All told, during his lifetime Williams published some twenty books of poetry and seventeen of prose and fiction, including drama, and he delivered more than three thousand babies.
About the Presenter/Readers
Jonathan Cohen, presenter and reader, is an award-winning poet, translator, essayist, and scholar of inter-American literature. Poets whom he has translated from Spanish include Ernesto Cardenal, Enrique Lihn, and Pedro Mir. Among the subjects of his essays are Waldeen, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, and Muna Lee, the subject of his A Pan-American Life (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, 1916–1959 (New Directions, 2011) is his edition of William Carlos Williams’s verse translations from Spanish; Al Que Quiere! (New Directions, 2017), his centennial edition of Williams’s breakthrough volume of poetry; The Dog and the Fever (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), his edition of Williams’s translation of the Spanish Golden Age novella by Pedro Espinosa; and My Excellency (Swan Isle Press, 2025), his edition of Williams’s translation of the Puerto Rican play by Luis Rechani Agrait. For more, visit jonathancohenweb.com.
Gy Mirano, born and raised in Buenos Aires, is a New York actress, voice-over artist, producer, and arts advocate. Her acting work includes theater, film, television, live presentations, and voice-overs for commercials, documentaries, and art projects. A dedicated arts and film advocate, she has collaborated with iconic New York cultural institutions, most prominently at The Cervantes Institute, The Americas Society, Poets House, Queens World Film Festival, The New York Botanical Garden, and CUNY’s The America’s Film Festival of New York where she serves on the Advisory Board. As an actors’ advocate, she serves on SAG-AFTRA’s National Audiobook Steering Committee and is a teaching artist at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. Her work as a performer together with her advocacy of Latin American arts and culture in the United States was recognized with the Gabriela Mistral, Julia de Burgos, Frida Kahlo Award. For more, visit gymirano.com.
About the event
This Eventbrite ticket is your reservation for the event.
Please note that the purchase of My Excellency: Comedy in Three Acts ($24.00) is required for entrance.
Upon arrival, our team will direct you to the register to obtain your copy and complete your admission.
The store will begin welcoming guests at 7:15 pm.
Should you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected].
In the event of the event being sold out. Please email Events@Dramabookshop to be added to the Waiting List.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Drama Book Shop, 266 West 39th Street, New York, United States
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