The Burnt Garden

During the war, several healthy men were admitted to the San Miguel psychiatric hospital. Why? Many years later, Garay, the director of the hospital, who was already in charge at the time, and Benet, his most brilliant disciple, confront each other over this enigma.

Two fundamental themes in Mayorga’s theatre appear in El jardín quemado. On the one hand, memory and the difficulty of judging the past. ‘The past,’ Mayorga has said, ‘is unpredictable, no less open than the future, and questions lie within it that can endanger the present that dares to observe it.’ On the other hand, imagination—and with it, theatre—as an escape from a harsh, cruel reality, such as that of those defeated in war.