Eunice Odio

San José, Costa Rica, 1919 – México DF, 1974

Eunice Odio was a Costarican poet, journalist and mythologist. She lived in perpetual exile until settling in Mexico, where she died. She reported on current affairs and cultural matters. Her verses, though, are deeply rooted in epic and myth. For her, truth could be phrased in a space between nature and body, the world and the self. In the midst of these pairs, and in the title of her most important book, poetry transitions and stays to be and to explain.

Hello...

Seeing life as I see it and being life as I am, even though partly and momentarily, I live high as a kite.

Eunice Odio is remembered as a woman of great vitality. Experience and identity blend in this declaration of love to her own life understood as growth and to Life with a capital L, one of the sides of the dichotomy it forms with Death with a capital D. She defends, strongly, the clarity of her existential thinking.

Mother and father nicknamed me “Dinamite”.

Here is a story of her birth told by the author with a tender humorous tone. Mothers and Grandmothers appear in the story to sustain the strong portrait of herself rendered by Eunice, an independent and self-sufficient individual from birth.

Have my love, a fugitive in the forest; […] have a horse that dreamt about itself.

Eunice Odio’s strength and her conviction that she lived immersed in and truly part of both the material and inmaterial world around her meant she was able to take ownership of all her eyes and her poetic eye saw. Endless gifts for whoever is able to understand her experience of living and seeing things big and small.

ACTRESS: Jimena Larraguivel | SOURCE: La obra en prosa de Eunice Odio (Rima de Vallbona, Editorial Costa Rica, 1980) | DIRECTED BY: Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles | SCRIPT: Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles. PRODUCTION: Isabel Santafé, Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles | CASTING: Cervantes Theatre | ARTISTIC DESIGN: Lucy Richards | COSTUME: O.La.La Vintage Wardrobe | HAIR & MAKE-UP: Charo Hairdressing | POSTPRODUCTION: Luke Hagan, Jonas Hawkin | SOUND: Jack Oliver | SET MANAGER: Samuel Walker | CAMERA OPERATOR: Luke Hagan | EDITING: Ashley Thorpe | STILL PHOTOGRAPHY: Rhodri Cooper | MAKING OF: Luke Hagan | TRANSLATION: Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles | VOICE ARROZ CON LECHE: Lisa Campos Sánchez.