Upcycling Antigone: A New Puerto Rican Heroine in the Theater of Carlos Canales

Drawing from Sébastian Lefait’s theories on adaptation as recycling as well as ideas proposed by Linda Hutcheon, among others, this essay examines Puerto Rican playwright Carlos Canales’s adaptation of the Greek tragedy Antigone, retitled Antígona barrio (2017). The play constitutes a poetic representation of a series of 1960s protests organized by the residents of the author’s native Puerto Rican barrio of Buenaventura, a working-class neighborhood within the island’s northeastern municipality of Carolina. I study the adaptation as a process of upcycling the theatrical canon that engages with an international spectatorship, and dialogues with the classic work, the Latin American context, and Puerto Rican social reality. Like recycling, upcycling connotes a collaborative and sustainable form of salvaging that transforms used materials into a new product of value for present and future generations. Buenaventura’s story echoes the noteworthy displays of solidarity and community organizing throughout the archipelago and the diaspora in the wake of Hurricane Maria and likewise foreshadows the mass protests of the summer of 2019 in response to the corruption of governor Ricardo Roselló’s administration. I explore the ways in which playwright Canales uses adaptive materials to intervene in discussions on national history, politics, and culture, calling attention to issues of migration and citizenship rights throughout the Latin American region and globally.