Emilio Carballido (1925-2008) was one of the most innovative and accomplished of Mexico's playwrights and one of the outstanding creators in the new Latin American theater. By his mid-forties he had already produced an impressive body of works in two very different veins. On the one hand, he mastered the techniques of the and "well-made play. and " On the other, he developed a richly rewarding vein of fantasy, sometimes poetic, sometimes comic, sometimes macabre - and sometimes all three. The plays in this volume are in the latter vein, ranging from surrealist farce in and "The Intermediate Zone and " to the grotesqueries of and "The Time and the Place, and " from tragicomedy in and "Theseus and " to the dreamlike permutations of and "The Golden Thread. and " But even at his most fantastic, Carballido never loses his remarkable gift for his peevish Minotaur, his raffish Nahual (were-jaguar) are wholly believable monsters.