A New Play Starring José Guadalupe Posada And The Calavera Catrina: Coming To San Miguel De Allende?

By Jim Nikas

After more than thirty years I can easily recall first seeing the engravings of the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada. I remember being struck by his artistry. I thought, “What talent!” Yet few people knew his name or even that he created the Calavera Catrina. That has changed a bit today, and although arguably the biggest part of his legacy would be the popularization of the calavera, the inspiration contained in the thousands of images he created lives on in many ways. It is not enough to ask what would the Day of the Dead look like without the images inspired by the skeletons and skulls he drew?  There is much more to Posada. As an illustrator working mainly for the México City based publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo between 1890 and 1912, Posada captured not only the essence of his times but provided us with a timeless reflection of our humanity.

After that early encounter with Posada’s images, I began to acquire his work. Those acquisitions by my partner and I became a collection containing thousands of images, engravings, acid etchings, woodcuts and printing plates. Then in 2013, a documentary about Posada was borne, Searching for Posada—Art and Revolutions, followed by dozens of exhibitions and lectures since. The Internet allowed for the introduction of a site dedicated to Posada’s works, the Posada-Art-Foundation.com. What next?

People often ask me why I had such an interest in Posada. Maybe it is in response to honoring the Mexican roots of my grandmother Martha Gomez Nikas. There may be something to that but as the writer/reviewer, Willy Lizárraga, points out, perhaps I see through Posada also “the question of artistic legacy” in that there is a boundless enigma, mainly because it involves attempting to control what is beyond our reach. The assessment and interpretation of what we accomplish in our lives will always fall into the hands of others, usually after we are dead. And they would unfailingly judge us, not informed by our own passions and prejudices, but theirs.

This topic fascinated me so much that I wrote a play, La Catrina & Posada - A Grave Dance, attempting to explore it while incorporating one of my favorite subjects, José Guadalupe Posada and the Calavera Catrina. Aside from my bias towards Posada, I imagined the sixty-year-old Posada, living alone and doggedly pursued by photomechanical technology replacing the need for his engravings. I pictured Posada sitting there questioning the worth of his life’s work and having a bit of an existential crisis, when he is suddenly visited by a mysterious yet familiar messenger, who better than his creation known now as the Calavera Catrina?

In reality, on January 20, 1913, José Guadalupe Posada died alone in his México City apartment from alcohol related enteritis. There is little known about him except for the imagery he left behind. We don’t really know his opinion on many points, there are no known diaries, notes or interviews. Instead, we rely on deductions and inferences from researchers and historians delving mainly into the vast body of work he produced.

This play is an attempt to give a fair account of what a dream in the last period of Posada’s life might have been like. Perhaps this dream occurred in a day or a flash of seconds. What might he have thought about? Some content is a summation of what might reasonably be deduced from studies by various historians who have detailed Don Lupe’s life. The idea was to pay homage but also to give people a chance to learn a little about Posada’s life. No one knows what his last few days or hours were like. For certain, some artistic license has been taken, but it is with good intent and with the ultimate respect that this story was written.

The result of my academic and creative endeavor had its first staged reading in San Francisco, CA at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in November 2023. It is a work in progress and hopefully ever improving. Might it be performed in English and Spanish, perhaps in San Miguel de Allende? I am hopeful. We’d need only a few from the village! Director, musicians and some dedicated support. There are only two actors: José Guadalupe Posada (Male) and La Calavera Catrina (Female). The performance time, as is, runs about one hour.

Jim Nikas, educator, producer, paleontologist and screenwriter, Nikas, is founder and Executive Director of the privately held Posada Art Foundation, dedicated to preserving and promoting the legacy Mexican artists José Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla. In 2023, he co-produced the documentary, The Needle and the Thread, about the life of the mystic Franciscan nun María de Jesús de Ágreda, Spain. His most recent project is a work in progress in the form of a stage play entitled La Catrina and Posada or Grave Dancing. Nikas is a former member of the Advisory Board of the Documentary Film Institute Board at San Francisco State University and served on the board of directors of the Coro Hispano de San Francisco.

posadaartfoundation@gmail.com