The relation that Higgins and McHale discerned between modernism and postmodernism reappears between Italo Calvino’s Cloven Viscount and its Brazilian stage version. Written by Cacá Brandão, the play Partido was staged by Grupo Galpão in 1998. While the Italian author worried about the moral responsibilities of humankind in postwar Europe, the Brazilian playwright focused on the essence of the human. Calvino’s existentialist approach would place him within the epistemological perspective that characterizes modernism, while Brandão’s concern with the condition of human beings would situate him along the ontological bias that marks postmodernism.
