The Story of the Man Who Turned into a Dog

The Story of the Man Who Turned into a Dog (Historia del hombre que se convirtió en perro) is a short play written by Osvaldo Dragún as part of his Historias para ser contadas (Stories to be Told), a series of short plays. It is the third short play in the series. The original production premiered with the independent theatre group Teatro Popular Fray Mocho in 1957.The Story of the Man Who Turned into a Dog, as well as the other Historias can be classified into many genres of theatre, including Theatre of the Absurd, Metatheatre and Magic realism.

Four actors introduce the story by explaining how they learned of the story of the man who turned into a dog, and then explain that they will demonstrate and play this story out for the audience. Actor #1 portrays the Man Who Turned into a Dog, Actors #2 and #3 portray the boss and the people he must work for, and Actress portrays his wife. The Man is in need of a job but is told by Actors 2 and 3 that he can only be given a job if someone else dies, retires or is fired. After a watchman’s dog dies following 25 years of service, the Man reluctantly agrees to become the new watchdog. He must live in the doghouse and eat dog food for the pay of 1 dollar a day, even though it drives him and his wife apart. Gradually, the man assumes dog-like behavior and is consistently denied other job opportunities that open up. After moving out to live in an apartment with other women so she can afford rent, his wife announces that she is pregnant and she is afraid her baby will be born a dog. The Man has an outburst and runs away, fully assuming the role of a dog. By the end of the play, Actor 1 can only bark and is no longer able to shift between man and dog.

The contrast between human speech and the barking required of the man in his job as a watchdog could hardly be more stark, and at the end of the story he has entirely lost the ability to speak. The devaluation of language itself is not overly produced in Dragún's work, for the linguistic patterns remain largely coherent. Nevertheless, the use of language as a mechanism of both deceit and understanding is in keeping with the basic suspiciousness toward language's surface appearance that characterizes the absurd.

Other prominent themes in Dragún's work and the Historias para ser contadas series include: "the criticism of censorship, repression and internal exile."

Osvaldo Dragún was known for bringing the Epic theatre of Brecht to Latin America, and combining modern Argentine theatre technique with classical themes. Much of his work features "narrative foregrounding," which "forces the audience to observe the narrative process." Characteristics of Dragún's plays that are separate from Brecht include emphasis on the absurd, character underdevelopment and a combination of both narrative and presentational style writing.

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