Restless and always very demanding with himself, the playwright and writer Abel Gonzalez Melo is more cheerful than usual around these days due to the recent presentation of two of his books that comprise two of his plays, Chamaco and The Habit and the Virtue. Who gets to know Abelito personally -this is how his friends call him - not only surprised by the ample trajectory and creative capacity he has in spite of his age (author of theater plays, stories, poetries, multiple studies on drama not only in Cuba but in other countries, countless prizes and national as well as international recognitions, an arduous work as editor, among other tasks), but also for the honesty, sincerity, and strength with which he faces each of his projects. This unquestionable talent of our scene and letters is satisfied by the welcoming given to his books in the public.

P: - Now we have the chance of coming face to face with two of your plays but through literary texts. What fears and satisfactions do you feel as a writer before a work finished and published?

You always want to make adjustments, and during the editing stage are possible but the printed and published text imposes some respect. I try that my works get finished to the book, in their final version. To that purpose I read and reread the originals, I put them to rest for some days and return to them later, to see what I had left, what sentence is best for a character, what gesture works or if its more suggesting for an actor the absence of the gesture and the word in his solitude. Being an editor influences that and that I have a permanent "tick" with the printed word. But Id like to think that, beyond the memory anyone keeps of a montage, the book lasts in its physical dimension, its there, it stays. Its my piece of transcendency. Its the piece of the playwright.

P: - And what do you feel as playwright when that work is taken to the stage?

To me is like unveiling a secret. My work is mine. Slowly gets to my mother, my friends, the director, and the actors. The public. I start to lose possession of it and in the end I wrap it in its sculptural dimension, on the stage. Its like a person that departs and he returns and its very yours, and although far away there are things that remain in you and still belong to you. I find again the work and my words and its something momentous for me, a spell. To see my extrapolated piece, led by a director who is like the other me which is the part of me represented. Its painful that someone steals that secret from you, but its unheard of the pleasure to share that affliction, that pain, that contradictory universe that one had during the process of writing.

P: - The literary text is the base for the changing into the scene. You have been very lucky that your works have been represented by important Cuban directors. Have there been deceptions or dissents as creator before any staging of one of your works, or rather satisfactions?

Carlos Celdran, for example he was in charge of the world premiere of Chamaco, he is an extraordinary director. I wrote the play almost under the influence of his theater, understanding Koltès, Brecht, Azama through the worlds he created for his group Argos. Maybe for that reason the connection was incredible and the response of the public, mainly in this second season of 2007 in the small room of Ayestaran and 20 de Mayo Street it has been incredible. Besides, with Celdrán you always have the privilege of the intelligence: he will piece apart your work from the inside, like he did with Chamaco, he tells you why, to explain the unpublished biographies of those characters until today and dig in every possible angles of connection of the piece with the world, with the present of Cuba. That is a privilege, a director like him, a genius like him.

Source: By: Yoel Lugones Vazquez, CubaSi