Enacting the Impossible: Techniques and Limitations of Staging Magical Realism

This paper explores the complexities of bringing the imaginative extremes of magical realism to the physical realm of the stage. Magical realism famously challenges the reader by demanding not just a suspension of belief but also a suspension of disbelief—it demands that we suspend our beliefs in the physical reality of our existence and move into a realm where we are required to accept the excesses of the imagination beyond what is usually considered to be fiction’s limits. Moreover, it requires the willingness on the part of the reader to take up the challenge of accepting what would be impossible in the physical world while demanding that these elements are understood in relation to a reality that appears convincing and possibly even familiar. In recent years in English-speaking theatre, productions such as Angels in America, Marisol, Midnight’s Children, Jerusalem, and Life of Pi, innovate theatrical convention with light and digital projections, sound, symbolic set-design, and puppetry while maintaining a necessary foot in realism through the placement of familiar objects, locations, costumes, and language register. This paper will consider the effectiveness of these techniques and the comparative success of adaptations of novels for the stage, in contrast to magical realist plays written for the stage. The resulting exploration considers the potential for further development of the genre of magical realism in recent forms of magical realism of World Theatre in Asia and Latin America.