Niggli, Josefina

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NIGGLI, Josefina

Born 13 July 1910, Monterrey, Mexico; died December 1983

Daughter of Frederick F. and Goldie Morgan Niggli

Josefina Niggli's father, of Swiss and Alsatian ancestry, left Texas in 1893 to manage a cement plant in the village of Hidalgo, Mexico; her mother was a concert violinist from Virginia. In 1913 and in 1925, when revolutions broke out in Mexico, the family fled to San Antonio, Texas, where Niggli had her only formal schooling. She graduated from Main Avenue High School in 1925 and from Incarnate Word College in 1931.

Niggli studied playwrighting at the University of North Carolina, a center for the development of regional and folk drama. She wrote a three-act play, Singing Valley, for her thesis, and received her M.A. degree in drama in 1937. Niggli's work with Prof. Frederick H. Koch's Carolina Playmakers was a major influence on her writing. Koch himself edited an anthology of her work, Mexican Folk Plays, in 1938 (reprinted in 1976). Since then, Niggli lived in North Carolina, except for sojourns with Bristol University and the Bristol Old Vic in England and with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. She taught English and radio scriptwriting at the University of North Carolina, and established a drama department at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.

Niggli's one-act plays of Mexican folk life have long been favorites of discerning high school drama groups. These plays enliven a small cast and simple scenic requirements with abundant stage action, sound effects, and opportunities for characterization. Niggli's special skill is her ability to blend closely observed local color and customs with universally understood emotions and humor. Although written in the 1930s, her plays have not become dated.

In This Bull Ate Nutmeg (1937), Niggli drew upon her childhood memories of a one-man sideshow attraction and of mock bullfights. The play includes folk music, a romantic rivalry, and a climactic backyard bullfight, underscored by the cheers and laughter of village spectators. This is Villa! (1939) is a portrait of the murderous Pancho Villa. Niggli created an incident that reveals his sentimental and childlike side as well as his cruelty. Despite momentary lapses into swashbuckling melodrama, the play, like all Niggli's dramatic and narrative fiction, has a convincing documentary quality. Niggli's most frequently performed play is Sunday Costs Five Pesos: A One-Act Comedy of MexicanVillage Life (1939, reissued 1964). In her book New Pointers on Playwriting (1945, 1967), Niggli commented: "My Sunday Costs Five Pesos has made me more money than a bestselling novel, primarily because it is presented again and again in contests."

Niggli's first narrative fiction work, Mexican Village (1945, 1994), a collection of 10 stories of daily life in the village of Hidalgo, using recurrent characters, was uniformly praised by critics. Step Down, Elder Brother (1947) is set among the aristocracy in Monterrey. Niggli again studied the impact of social and historical change in Mexico in Farewell, Mama Carlotta (1950) and Miracle for Mexico (1964). If her writing is occasionally criticized as "excessively romantic," that is also its strength, for it ensnares the reader with the devices of good storytelling and vividly conveys Niggli's warm affection for the people of northern Mexico.

Other Works:

Mexican Silhouettes (1931). Tooth or Shave (1936). Miracle at Blaise (1944). Pointers on Radio Writing (1946).

Bibliography:

Igo, J., ed., Confluence: A Texas Anthology (1985). Martinez, J. Chicano Scholars and Writers: A Bibliographical Dictionary (1979). Spearman, W., The Carolina Playmakers: The First Fifty Years (1970). Velasquez Trevino, G. L., Cultural Ambivalence in Early Chicana Prose Fiction (dissertation, 1985).

Reference works:

American Novelists of Today (1951). CB (1949). National Playwrights Directory (1977). Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995).