Chocrón, Isaac (1932–)

Isaac Chocrón is a Venezuelan playwright, director, actor, critic, and novelist. Born in Maracay on 25 September 1932, he was trained in the United States and England as an economist. One of the moving forces in the contemporary Venezuelan theater, along with José Ignacio Cabrujas and Román Chalbaud, Chocrón, a native of Maracay, founded the Nuevo Grupo in 1967 and pioneered a vanguard, independent theater in Caracas that set the standards of quality for a new generation. The Nuevo Grupo offered an international repertoire as well as original plays by Venezuelan authors.

Chocrón's theater is varied and polemical. His first play, Mónica y el florentino (1959), focused on problems of alienation and communication within an international guest house. In 1963 he won the Premio del Teatro de Ateneo in Caracas. His popular Asia y el lejano oriente (1966), about the selling of a nation, was revived in 1984 for the grand opening of the Venezuelan National Theater Company, which Chocrón was invited to head. Chocrón dealt with consumerism in O.K. (1969) and with homosexuality in La revolución (1972). Other plays include El acompañante (1978) and Mesopotamia (1979). Simón (1983) presents Simón Bolívar and his mentor Simón Rodríguez in a challenging encounter between the would-be hero and his wiser master, who obliges him to face up his potential and to the promise of his leadership. Chocrón is also the author of a major book on American playwrights of the twentieth century, and the plays Escrito y Sellado (1993), Tap Dance (1999), and Los Navegaos (2006).

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century; Bolívar, Simón.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Durbin, Joyce Lee. La dramaturgia de Isaac Chocrón. Dissertation Abstracts International 50, no. 6 (Dec. 1989), 1673A.

Friedman, Edward H. "The Beast Within: The Rhetoric of Signification in Isaac Chocrón's Animales feroces," Essays on Foreign Languages and Literatures 17 (1987): 167-183.

Márquez Montes, Carmen. La dramaturgia de Isaac Chocrón: Experiencia del individualismo crítico. Caracas: Comisión de Estudios de Postgrado, Facultad de Humanidades y Educación, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 2000.

Mujica, Barbara. "Isaac Chocrón: Tap Dancing Until the End." Américas 52 (January-February 2002): 63.

Nigro, Kirsten F. "A Triple Insurgence: Isaac Chocrón's La revolución," Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain MLA 35, no. 1 (1981): 47-53.

Roldán, Julia Z. Isaac Chocrón: Una lectura de sus textos teatrales. Caracas: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad Pedagógica Experimental, 1996.

Rotker, Susana. Isaac Chocrón y Elisa Lerner: Los transgresores de la literatura venezolana: Reflexiones sobre la identidad judía. Caracas: FUNDARTE, Alcaldía del Municipio Libertador, 1991.

                                  George Woodyard