Reviewed by:

• Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies, Objects, Archives by Paola S. Hernández
• Analola Santana

For a few decades now, Latin American artists and scholars have been grappling with a shift in creative practices that began at the turn of the century in response to the economic crisis that transformed the political landscape in the beginning of the 2000s. Many have identified this turn as the development of a new genre, characterized as envisioning "the real" on the theatrical stage. In her book, Paola Hernández seeks to dialogue with the historical trajectory of documentary theatre as it pertains to Latin American and the notion of the real in contemporary performance, a genre Hernández defines as artists using "documentary techniques as a way to explore issues stemming from real events. In doing so, they destabilized fictional settings, and highlighted the possibilities of how the theater could engage with real events in a more direct way, relying less on traditional realism" (1). The author wants to bring forth an understanding of how documentary theatre has evolved in Latin America, the political purpose of this evolution, and the intricate ways in which artists have engaged with this form through theatrical practices, technology, and above all the novel use of objects on the stage. Through her compelling examples, Hernández draws attention to the complexity of this seemingly simple concept through an introduction and four chapters that carefully display the multiple ways in which this term can be used and how elusive the search for a single, stable definition can be. The intended purpose of the book is to understand the nuanced performative practices that very important artists in Latin America have been developing as they relate to a questioning of the relationship between truth and fiction, a realm of increasing importance in a region that continues to grapple the violent historical past that has shaped their histories.

Staging Lives is a major contribution to the fields of Latin American, theatre, and performance studies. Hernández offers a theoretically sophisticated and eminently readable analysis of how the theatre of the "real" comes to embody a broad range of aesthetic positions within the liminal space of fact and fiction. As the author explains, "the real in the theater has emerged as a way to respond to the many ambiguities, doubts and questions people have regarding shifting paradigms of truth, reality, and information" (161). Chapter 1, "Biodramas: Vivi Tellas and the Act of Documenting Lives," offers a brilliant study of this iconic Argentine artist, who is renowned for promoting the investigation of new approaches to biographical and documentary practices onstage to question the conventional theatrical representation. The second chapter, "Reenactments: The Autobiographical at Play in Lola Arias," focuses on the work of this renowned artist, paying particular attention to the active role that photography occupies in the retelling of personal stories in her work. Chapter 3 presents the work of Mexican company Teatro Línea de Sombra and its commitment to human rights through its politically charged work aimed at building memory through [End Page 110] site-specific works. In the final chapter, Hernández turns to the work of Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón. Through the analysis of three of his works, the author traces issues of memory politics that range from the Pinochet era and beyond to question the purpose of historical truth onstage. In each of the captivating cases studied in the book, the playwrights and performance artists mobilize the archive to flip accepted social norms and values around the concepts of truth and authenticity. Especially important to this study is the value placed on the theatrical object as an important actant of meaning on stage. Objects carry intrinsic value in these performances as they constitute remains of the reality staged and primary elements in the artists' own performed biographies.

Staging Lives also makes a sophisticated and important contribution to the scholarly debates around notions of the archive, object-art, memory, affect, and spectatorship through the prism of aesthetics, performance, embodiment, abjection, politics, and the biographical. Hern...

审核人：

• 拉丁美洲剧院的上演生活： Paola S. Hernández 的身体、物体和档案
• Analola 桑塔纳

几十年来，拉丁美洲艺术家和学者一直在努力应对创作实践的转变，这种转变始于世纪之交，以应对 2000 年代初改变政治格局的经济危机。许多人认为这种转变是一种新类型的发展，其特点是在戏剧舞台上设想“真实”。在她的书中，Paola Hernández 试图与纪录片戏剧的历史轨迹进行对话，因为它与拉丁美洲和当代表演中的真实概念有关，埃尔南德斯将这一流派定义为艺术家使用“纪录片技术作为探索源于真实事件。这样做，他们动摇了虚构的环境，

分期生活是对拉丁美洲、戏剧和表演研究领域的重大贡献。Hernández 对“真实”的剧院如何在事实和虚构的临界空间内体现出广泛的审美立场进行了理论上复杂且极具可读性的分析。正如作者解释的那样，“剧院中的真实已经成为一种回应人们对真理、现实和信息范式转变的许多模棱两可、怀疑和疑问的方式”（161）。第 1 章“传记剧：维维·特拉斯和记录生活的行为”对这位标志性的阿根廷艺术家进行了精彩的研究，他以在舞台上推动对传记和纪录片实践的新方法的调查以质疑传统的戏剧表演而闻名。第二章“重演：Lola Arias 中的自传”关注这位著名艺术家的作品，特别关注摄影在她作品中复述个人故事中所起的积极作用。第 3 章介绍墨西哥公司 Teatro Línea de Sombra 的工作及其对人权的承诺，其具有政治色彩的工作旨在通过[完第 110 页]网站特定作品。在最后一章，埃尔南德斯转向智利剧作家吉列尔莫·卡尔德龙的作品。通过对他的三部作品的分析，作者追溯了从皮诺切特时代及以后的记忆政治问题，以质疑舞台上历史真相的目的。在书中研究的每个引人入胜的案例中，剧作家和表演艺术家都动员档案馆，围绕真理和真实性的概念翻转公认的社会规范和价值观。对这项研究尤其重要的是，戏剧对象作为舞台上意义的重要行为者所赋予的价值。物品在这些表演中具有内在价值，因为它们构成了艺术家自己表演传记中舞台和主要元素的现实遗骸。

Staging Lives还通过美学、表演、体现、落魄、政治和传记的棱镜，对围绕档案、物件艺术、记忆、情感和观众的概念的学术辩论做出了复杂而重要的贡献。赫恩...