by
Carla Zúñiga
Translation by Fran Olivares
Transgressive, Poignant and Heartfelt
New Chilean Take on a Familiar Fairy Tale.
“I hate summer. The most mournful moments of my life have happened in summer. Being born, getting married, giving birth.”
A princess wakes up one day in the tower of a castle, all covered in vomit, doped up and confused. She realises she is being held prisoner by her two maids for something terrible that happened the night before, but she can't remember what. With the help of her two children, she will try to escape before something even worse happens.
SAD Summers is a dark and deeply macabre fairy tale, offering a climactic conclusion that highlights the harsh realities of societal and gender expectations. With a deliberately grotesque and exaggerated tone, this camp tale critiques the misogynistic narrative of princesses needing rescue, shedding light on gender-based violence and societal limitations imposed on women and the transgender community.
Inspired by the British icons of Princess Diana and Anne Boleyn, and reinterpreted through a Latinx perspective, SAD Summers explores profound questions about gender identity and the roles women are forced to play. This play reflects on the violence and oppression women have faced throughout history, highlighting the daily societal pressures that dictate who they should be and how they should behave.
In a patriarchal society, women are often expected to be passive, concerned with appearance, childlike, in need of protection, and nurturing to others, creating a connection between what it means to be a woman in a world ruled by men and their definitions. These traits are imposed upon us by society, rather than being innate characteristics. SAD Summers confronts these imposed norms and encourages a dialogue on the reality of these social constructs.
SAD Summers is the first in a trilogy of translations, all written by acclaimed Chilean playwright Carla Zúñiga, a two-time winner of the Critics’ Circle of Chile Award and participant in the Royal Court’s International Program and Dublin’s Next Stage Festival. Commissioned by The British Council Chile.
Does this princess bring her fate upon herself by defying norms and social expectations?
If so, what was she supposed to be... a princess who sings with the birds?
What does it mean to be a woman in a society that demands passivity and obedience?
How does our society continue to impose ‘princess’ stereotypes on women today?
Is gender-based violence a consequence of challenging traditional roles, or is it a tool to enforce them?
In what ways do some people still romanticise the idea of princesses needing rescue, and what are the real-world implications of this narrative?
'The SAD Summers of Princess Diana' has been through various processes and workshops to develop its translation.
It was first part of a collective translation workshop produced by Head For Heights and led by Sue Dunderdale. It was also selected to feature in the inaugural Global Latin American Voices at the Round House, where showcases excerpts of plays by Latinx writers from around the globe were staged in the UK for the first time. In 2020, it joined the April's Presence Theatre Live Reading Group session and in October the monthly meet-and-read session organised by Out of the Wings.
Review By Colin Ellwood
Associate director and producer for Presence Theatre Company
Live Play-reading 2020
Friday 17th April and with the new limit of 12 participants in the first of what will now be weekly zoom sessions we had a brilliant time with The S.A.D. Summers of Princess Diana, by Chilean playwright Carla Zuñiga, translated by Fran Olivares, who joined us for the reading. This proved a wonderful scrambled, curdled, scabrous fairly-tale/mythical reconceiving of the demise of the the unfortunate princess...
"Shockingly and transgressively funny as well as deeply poignant and heartfelt..."
"Carla Zúñiga manages to both evoke the work of Sarah Kane and Philip Ridley and create her own beautifully unique, contemporary voice... "
Review By Ami Sayers
actor, writer, director and teacher.
Live Play-reading 2020
While we were reading this play on Friday I kept thinking, this is the play I always wish would come out whenever I sit down to write. This has only happened to me with the work of two other playwrights, Sarah Kane and Philip Ridley. Both British, both grotesque yet profoundly poetic in their approach to language, both unafraid of raw, visceral emotion and the power of a strong theatrical image that feels at once like it was scribbled in crayon by a child and by someone with a lifetime of pain and suffering clawing to be let out. Both of these writers are controversial and divisive, in my mind the only way to be as a playwright.
Check the recording of final scene SAD Summers