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- Amarillo
Amarillo (c.1998), Juan Mayorga Ruano
- Titles
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English title: Yellow
Date written: c. 1998
First publication date: 2001
First production date: 1998
Keywords: family, power > intimidation, family > parents and children, history > memory
- Pitch
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Colours invoke memories. Favourite colours can bring us joy. Or, if we are very unlucky, a colour can become symbolic of all the unhappiness in our lives.
- Synopsis
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A Blind Man is led into a house by a Boy. The Boy gives the Blind Man objects which he inspects in his hand, recognising them only by their feel. The Boy tells the Blind Man the colour of every object he touches. One object, however, troubles the Blind Man. He holds it in his hand, but cannot work out what it is. The Boy tells him that the object is yellow. But the Blind Man doubts that this is the case. He tells the Boy that the woman of the house – who we assume was his mother – always hated yellow. For her, yellow was responsible for all that went wrong in her life. The Blind Man remembers how this woman blamed the colour yellow on his father losing his job. He remembers how she blamed the colour yellow on his father packing his bags and leaving for good. The Blind Man asks the Boy several times to reconsider what colour the object is. The Boy answers ‘yellow’ each time, receiving successively violent blows for doing so. Gradually, the Blind Man starts to believe that he himself might be the reason why yellow is unexpectedly present in the house. He was the last to abandon the woman. Now, he wonders if that was the final straw for her. Did she close the door and surround herself in yellow, the colour of her bad luck? In the end, the Boy changes his mind. Perhaps he is scared of the Blind Man, perhaps he feels sorry for him. In any case, the Boy relents, and tells the Blind Man that the object is not yellow, but red.
- Editions
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Mayorga, Juan. 2000. ‘Amarillo’, Estreno 36.2, 20
Mayorga, Juan. 2001. ‘Amarillo’. In Oscuridad, pp. 89-93. Madrid, Teatro del Astillero
Mayorga, Juan. 2001. ‘Amarillo’. In Teatro para minutos, pp. 29-31. Madrid, Ñaque
Entry written by Gwynneth Dowling. Last updated on 3 May 2011.
