Following the chronological contours of Virgilio Piñera’s biography, this chapter explores his initial involvement with the Grupo Orígenes writers and his subsequent rejection of the group’s esthetics; his poetry, particularly his inventive long poem La isla en peso; his pioneering satirical and absurdist plays; the acerbic humor, nonconformist characters, and existential despair characterizing his short stories; the convention-shattering treatment of sexuality and homoeroticism in his novels; and his literary-journalistic writing. Noting Piñera’s enthusiastic initial embrace of the revolution and engagement in its artistic projects, the chapter also details his subsequent arrest, ostracism by the state, and censorship of his work until his death in 1979; the official Cuban resurrection of his legacy beginning in the 1980s; and international recognition of his work into the twenty-first century.

This chapter examines the recurrent search for self-determination and identity at the core of modern Cuban theater, a search portrayed as embodied in theater’s own distinctive engagement with time. The chapter locates the birth of modern Cuban theater between 1902 and 1959 as a point of departure to elaborate upon representations of family and the disintegrating republic in the mid-twentieth century, characterized by a nonprogressive temporality within works by Virgilio Piñera and José Triana. The past, contrasted to the utopian-seeking, revolutionary present, unfolds in work by, for example, Abelardo Estorino and Eugenio Espinosa Hernández, the chapter argues. However, the chapter suggests that, by the end of the twentieth century, such a paradigm was replaced by undeniable frustration and desire for change in work, for example, by Alberto Pedro Torriente and Ulises Rodríguez Febles, as well as within the many new theater collectives, for example El Ciervo Encantado, that arose in the midst of the socioeconomic and political crisis of the Special Period and beyond.