In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Remembering George (1934–2010) Those who had the privilege of knowing, studying, or working with George Woodyard may find it difficult to believe that ten years have gone by since he passed on November 7, 2010. For many of us that seems like yesterday. Maybe that is due to lingering denial, our inability to accept that he is gone. Or perhaps

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Introducción:Las regiones que dejaron de ser artísticamente desiertas: Una exploración de las nuevas perspectivas de las prácticas teatrales coloniales latinoamericanas Catalina Andrango-Walker Este número de Latin American Theatre Review reúne seis artículos dedicados a diversas formas teatrales del periodo colonial latinoamericano. La

Abstract: According to historical accounts of the period, preaching in the Baroque world was meant to be a spectacular event carried out in a theatrical space. Music and stage props were used in order to reinforce the message of the sermon. It was a feast for the senses, with the audience surrounded by sculptures, paintings, and artistic stained glass depicting scenes from the Bible, while the scent

Abstract: One of the most important aims of the viceregal literate community was to contribute to the theological construction and installation of the Virgin Mary in the imagination of the American population. As we see in El amar su propia muerte, dramatist Espinosa Medrano put his pen at the service of this purpose, employing the discursive genres of his time. My analisis of this comedic text focuses

Abstract: In November 1640, at the Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City, the Society of Jesus offered the newly arrived viceroy of New Spain, the Marqués de Villena, a performance of the Comedia de San Francisco de Borja, written by Matías de Bocanegra. Bocanegra based this piece on the biography of the saint written by Ribadeneyra, particularly the section in which the latter discusses

Abstract: In this article I analyze the sixteenth-century New Spanish Jesuit play Triumpho de los Sanctos, written and performed at the Colegio Máximo de San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City as the centerpiece of an eight-day festival to welcome the arrival of a shipment of holy relics from Rome. The play focuses on four early Christian martyrs—saints Pedro, Doroteo, Gorgonio, and Juan—, whose bones

Abstract: In the course of his missionary work in Brazil in the latter half of the sixteenth century, the Jesuit José de Anchieta (1534-1597) authored multiple reports, lyric compositions, and dramatic spectacles about the lives and deaths of martyrs. Martyrdom thus became a consistent theme across his broad and variegated corpus—something in itself unsurprising, given the long history of martyrdom

Abstract: Lettered men, who arrived to the Andean region as missionaries, soldiers, and historians, wrote abundantly about the natives' ceremonies and their remarkable ability to sing and to play musical instruments. Music and performance soon became a standard part of religious conversion as well as a means of reaffirming Spanish power at public events such as the arrival of new officials, the births

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: In MemoriamDeb Cohen (1955-2020) Elaine M. Miller Deb Cohen, Professor Emerita of Spanish at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, passed away suddenly on March 13, 2020. After working in the travel industry, Deb earned her PhD in Spanish from the University of Kansas, where she wrote a dissertation about the plays of Mexican dramatist

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Precarious Forms: Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas by Candice Amich César Barros A. Amich, Candice. Precarious Forms: Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas, Northwestern UP, 2020. 232 pp. What forms of resistance can artistic practices, poetry, and performance art, in particular, stage within a space swallowed

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Staging Frontiers: The Making of Modern Popular Culture in Argentina and Uruguay by William Garrett Acree Elisabeth L. Austin Acree, William Garrett, Jr. Staging Frontiers: The Making of Modern Popular Culture in Argentina and Uruguay. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2019. 279 pp. Staging Frontiers: The Making of Modern Popular

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Malvinas. La guerra en el teatro, el teatro de la guerra by Ricardo Dubatti, and: Malvinas II. La guerra del teatro, el teatro de la guerra by Ricardo Dubatti Bettina Girotti Dubatti, Ricardo, comp. Malvinas. La guerra en el teatro, el teatro de la guerra. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del CCC, 2017. 226 pp. Dubatti, Ricardo, comp

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Not the Time to Stay: The Unpublished Plays of Víctor Fragoso by Víctor Fragoso David Tenorio Fragoso, Víctor. Not the Time to Stay: The Unpublished Plays of Víctor Fragoso. Edited, translated and with an introduction by Consuelo Martínez-Reyes. New York: Centro Press, 2018. 244 pp. Not the Time to Stay is an anthology featuring

Abstract:At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of São Paulo rapidly transformed into an industrial metropolis. As its population grew, so did the number and variety of theaters. This article compares two government-sponsored auditoriums, the Municipal and Colombo Theaters, to explain how theaters helped urban residents rethink the structure of their changing society. Inaugurated within a few

From Colonial to Post-Colonial times, African rituals and other magical-religious manifestation have become a constant aesthetic resource when it comes to representing Afro-Cubans in the theater. In this essay, I analyze black face theater or teatro bufo to trace pioneer theater plays that employed Afro-Cuban rituals to portray blackness during the 19th century. By examining several plays, especially

La video instalacion Veteranos (2014), la obra de teatro Campo minado (2016) y la pelicula Teatro de Guerra (2018) de Lola Arias forman un corpus de objetos de arte de un genero hibrido que atraviesa y desafia los limites de las artes escenicas y las artes audiovisuales, mientras explora la guerra de Malvinas, librada entre Argentina y Gran Bretana en 1982. Si bien concebidas, escritas y dirigidas

RESUMENEl articulo estudia los dramas El taller (2012) y Liceo de ninas (2016) de Nona Fernandez. Se plantea que las obras piensan el pasado chileno reciente sosteniendose en la premisa actual sobre el supuesto triunfo del proyecto neoliberal de la dictadura militar, pero que hoy en plena postdictadura da forma a una sociedad que no comprende ni resuelve las contradicciones que caracterizan a tal proyecto

In the play El ano en que naci by the Argentine Lola Arias, eleven performers born during the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990) reconstruct events from that specific historical period and work through the personal impact of those events before the audience’s eyes. Nonetheless, as Marvin Carlson reminds us in The Haunted Stage: The Theater as Memory Machine there is a spectral character in the representation

Resumen Este articulo se propone explicar la consolidacion historica de una cierta forma de produccion de obras en el teatro alternativo en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. El trabajo sostiene que, en Buenos Aires, el aprendizaje de la actuacion y la formacion de obras se encuentran profundamente entrelazados a partir de ciertos teatros-escuelas organizados en torno a ciertos maestros de renombre, que tambien

Roberto Servin Munoz, el prominente cofundador y exdirector de teatro de Comicos de la Legua, nace en la ciudad de Queretaro en 1941. Estudia Derecho en la Universidad Autonoma de Queretaro donde se lanza a la actividad artistica y comienza su trayectoria en el teatro universitario. La presencia de este actor y director en Comicos de la Legua, la compania de teatro universitario mas antigua de America

Este trabajo se propone comprender las transformaciones de los rasgos medulares del teatro independiente de los 70s en el teatro independiente actual. La experimentacion de los lenguajes, la creacion colectiva, la desjerarquizacion de los modos de produccion y el caracter politico del teatro se han mantenido y recreado. Sostenemos que las continuidades y resignificaciones estuvieron asociadas a que

Abstract:Virgilio Piñera is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of absurdism in Cuba, but his place within the broader global tradition of the Theatre of the Absurd remains contested. Piñera wrote his seminal play Falsa alarma in 1948, prior to the opening of Eugène Ionesco's La cantatrice chauve, but he expanded the text by incorporating a number of prototypically absurd passages on the occasion

In exploring Andres Perez's La huida, staged by him in 2001 after a 25-year process of rewriting the script he wrote in 1975, this essay highlights his strugggle to convey deep personal trauma by narrativizing an undisclosed homofobic state murder perpetrated in Chile in 1929. Semiotic complexity, auto-reflexivity, and metatheatricality are all part of the radical turn that Perez took during this extended

Abstract:This essay approaches the political and historical dimensions of three contemporary experiences of documentary theatre: one from Chile—Ñi pu tremen. Mis antepasados—and the other two from Argentina—Archivo White and Las personas. All three of them brought to the stage not professional actors but rather members of a certain community: respectively, women of mapuche origin, neighbors of the

Abstract:This study presents the life story of Virginia Fábregas, a major diva of Mexico at the start of the twentieth century. The discussion focuses on the following issues: changes in the theatre between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the artistic life of Fábregas; her theatre; her image of elegance; and her complex and scandalous divorce. Theories of Pierre Bourdieu on distinction

Abstract:This essay contextualizes the queer project undertaken by Argentinian playwright and critic Tulio Carella's alter-ego Lucio Ginarte in the performative narrative that makes up most of his hybrid diary, Orgia (1968; 2011). Ginarte's symbolic, sexualized occupation of Recife's downtown in 1960-1961 foreshadows the queering of public spaces and openly affirms the physicality and presentness of

Abstract:This article examines the "bad woman" archetype of La Llorona and how it has been used to destabilize patriarchal discourses in Chicana theatre. Chicana feminist playwrights appropriate, subvert, and transform La Llorona in such a way as to create discourses of resistance, deploying the female body as a tool for cultural upheaval and using theater practice as a weapon of sociopolitical resistance

Abstract:Concepción is a Chilean city rich in history and culture, home to the legendary Teatro de la Universidad de Concepción (TUC), which was the most active regional university theater during the 1950's and 1960's. Three young, idealistic actors named Gustavo Sáez, Ximena Ramírez, and Julio Muñoz founded the independent theatre company El Rostro in Concepción in 1978. This article traces the historiography

Abstract:This essay establishes a bridge between the process of creating the spectacle Cinco Tempos para a Morte and theatre genetics, using the principles of the latter. This methodological device is used to understand not only the final product (the spectacle), but also the collective creation process (the rehearsals) of the spectacle created and performed between 2010 and 2011 in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Abstract:This article examines Adiós, Ayacucho, an iconic one-actor play by theatre collective Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, by focusing on the theatrical figure of Qolla, which is proposed here as the emblem of the relationship between liminality and carnival. Adiós, Ayacucho is the story of Alfonso Canepa, an Andean peasant leader who was tortured, partially dismembered, and disappeared by the Peruvian

Abstract:In Angie Cervantes’s Ley seca (2007), seventeen-year-old Eva faces loneliness and social pressure as she seeks an illegal abortion. The play’s setting during Holy Week and use of the Stations of the Cross as its structural framework call attention to the ways in which the weight of the Catholic Church’s moral teachings and their influence on the legal regulation of reproductive rights in contemporary

Abstract:This study argues that Norge Espinosa’s play Ícaros (2003) unpacks the longstanding, post-revolutionary Cuban connections among education, self-aware citizenship, and egalitarian ideals. In a contemporary version of the Icarus myth, Espinosa’s play stages the failed project of an older generation (embodied in three Dédalos) to create a new kind of super being through their offspring—the play’s

Abstract:In this article I review Evelina Fernández’s trilogy of plays, Hope, Faith, and Charity. The trio tells a semi-autobiographical family saga covering nearly one hundred years. Throughout the plays, Fernández addresses big issues in everyday life, using national and international arenas of international politics as a background. Passing through the Mexican Revolution, the Great Depression, WW

If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again, it had a dying fall. Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound, that breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odor. Enough, no more. ‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou, That, notwithstanding thy capacity

The idea for a scholarly journal devoted to Latin American theatre activities surfaced in 1966 at a faculty party hosted by Cy DeCoster to welcome a new member of KU’s Spanish & Portuguese Department, George Woodyard. At the time, I was an assistant professor of Speech and Drama, and my wife was an instructor of Portuguese. Prior to that, I was at Bowdoin College, where I produced and directed the

The following interview took place at the Grupo Pregones headquarters in the South Bronx, on the 20th of October, 2015, with Rosalba Rolón, Alvan Colón Lespier, and Jorge B. Merced, Associate Artistic Directors. What follows is an in-depth view of the process that took the iconic group from the conventions of the popular (Latin American) New Theatre movement, at the end of the 1970s, to a multi-faceted

The controversial play Orquídeas a la luz de la luna (1982) by Carlos Fuentes revolves around two women named María Félix and Dolores del Río. These characters adopt as their own the stories and urban legends surrounding the two icons of Mexican cinema for whom they are named. María and Dolores are convinced of these “masks,” of this semblance, which sows doubt in the public that recognizes them. Fuentes

This article provides an overview of the origins of contemporary Mexican political cabaret in Mexico City since the 1970s. It takes into consideration the historical and political context of Mexican culture and the relations between countercultural manifestations, contemporary art, para-theatrical spaces, and sexual dissidence. The article also aims to cover the most significant aspects of the incorporation

How should theatrical activity in Colombia acknowledge the country’s violent political life and the thousands of victims of an armed conflict that has lasted for almost six decades? What role should theatre play in the context of human-rights violations and institutional (in) justice to configure a collective memory and history? This study focuses on El deber de Fenster, a documentary drama by Humberto

Historically, theatre has served as a cultural and aesthetic resource for the promotion of ideas, discourses and symbols, as well as for the production and promotion of feelings. In the context of war, the scenic arts can serve to socially and culturally legitimize a national cause through the aesthetic, exemplary representation of opposing sides. In Chile, the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) made possible

This article examines how Manteca by Alberto Pedro Torriente—considered the most popular and polemic Cuban dramatist of his time—conveys the idea that during Cuba’s “Special Period” literary workmanship was homologous to culinary struggles, in part due to the artistic, social, and economic circumstances of the period. The passivity set on stage by the protagonists—three middle-aged siblings forced

The 2005 adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubú Rey by Enrique Permuy and Polizonteatro in Flor de Maroñas, a working-class neighborhood in the outskirts of Montevideo, did more than transform the play into a street spectacle. This article explores the connections between the event, which was later replicated in La Teja and other working-class neighborhoods, and a series of poetic and theoretical considerations

This study focuses on the relationship between theatre and visual and performance art in the work of Leandro Soto during the 1980s, when Cuban cultural policy aimed at “ideological purity” and constrained artistic freedom. Ironically, this attitude catalyzed the contamination of disciplines and a spirit of anti-normalization among artists, thus bringing about a dialogue between art, memory, and the

“out” bisexual celebrity figure “Cumbio.” These women explicitly invoke Peronism by identification with working-class groups and the new social/ethnic fabric that now characterizes Argentina and are also implicitly framed by Evita’s legacy and image. The volume ends with recent president Cristina Kirchner and the clever ways she has used Evita’s template (in some cases by literally covering buildings

This article analyzes the relationship between cultura ciudadana—the social-engagement program of Colombian sociologist and former mayor of Bogotá Antanas Mockus—and the artistic practice of Bogotá’s Mapa Teatro, particularly those works that focus on the demolished barrio known as El Cartucho. Particular attention is paid to how the politician and the artists share an understanding of citizenship/belonging

This essay reflects on the disciplinary trajectory of a course that I have taught both in foreign languages and literatures and in ethnic studies on the theme of migration in Hispanic Caribbean theatre. Crossing disciplinary borders sharpens our understanding of how theatrical performance has registered the complex social, economic, and political networks that connect the Hispanic Caribbean to the

The concept of migration offers a useful organizing principle for an introduction to Latin American theatre, as it encompasses multiple theatre styles and practices. Issues of migration are often in the news (in Latin America and beyond), thereby offering a point of entry for students who may not have studied theatre in the past. Migration in its multiple forms (immigration, emigration, exile, return)

Walter Benjamin’s ideas concerning the incommunicability of experiences suggest that there are events for which those involved cannot find listeners capable of comprehending their experiences. When such moments of incommunicability occur in Elena Garro’s dramatic world, many of her characters simply disappear from the scene. This article examines the dramatic function of disappearance in four of Garro’s

Eduardo Rovner’s ¿Una foto…? (Argentina, 1977) tells the superficially benign tale of a husband and wife who try to make their baby smile for a photograph. The play (dedicated, incidentally, to those who refused to smile) employs family as a metaphor for a nation forced into appearances of well-being through whatever means necessary, with the photograph serving as proof of that well-being. This study

Both Lucía Laragione and Pedro Sedlinsky in their respective Criaturas del aire and El informe del Dr. Krupp stage the encounter of the European “scientist/intellectual” with the American “primitive/savage.” Employing postcolonial theory, this articles analyzes how the European intellectual invades American space (implicitly “primitive” or “savage,” since it is defined as “not European”) while reconstructing

“Staging Hispanic Theatre” is a service-learning course that exemplifies a pedagogical practice that Rita Irwin and colleagues term “a/r/tography”—a strategy in which arts-making, research, teaching, and learning take place simultaneously, benefitting students, instructors, and audiences. Undergraduate students engage in high-impact practices (HIP) as they study children’s theatre and pedagogy, and

This study analyses little-studied plays by Mexican playwrights María Luisa Ocampo and Concepción Sada alongside a work by the better-known Argentine Alfonsina Storni. Written and performed in commercial theatres in the 1920s and ‘30s, all three plays portray female protagonists struggling with accepted social and cultural norms regarding marriage and motherhood. By calling attention to the use of

This essay considers how commonly held stereotypes associated with Latina bodies influence student readings of scripts that exploit, perpetuate, or interrogate the myth that “real women have curves.” Learned impulses to become visible or to classify the Other introduce strong anxieties of leaving the Latina body unmarked, but championing curves as “real” interprets excess as visibility, costuming Latinas

This article presents a practical approach to teaching Mexican political cabaret theatre in the US. It starts with a brief overview of the reasons why the movement begun to flourish in the 80s, as well as its connections to tent theatre (carpa), and musical revue theatre from the early 20th century. While it is impossible to state a single approach to the teaching and practice of contemporary Mexican

Aunque su capacidad histriónica le permitió interpretar a los más selectos personajes del teatro universal y fue invitado a formar parte de diversas compañías nacionales, Jesús Luis Valdés Oyervides (1950–2015) nunca abandonó su terruño. En los escenarios de su natal Saltillo, Coahuila, totalmente consagrado a su público, Chuy Valdés representó desde textos clásicos y renacentistas hasta dramas contemporáneos

With a focus on the relevance of Brazilian theatre in the United States, this article aims to gauge the diversity of challenges faced by those involved in the teaching of it in US colleges and universities and the staging of scenes or entire plays in those institutions and other venues. Attention is also given to related factors such as the availability of translated texts, the linguistic background

In this essay, I describe two seminars I have created for students in a US doctoral theatre studies program. In both seminars, we study Latin American theatre and performance of distinct periods as well as considering these texts and practices from different conceptual places. In this approach, I have sought to put into pedagogical practice the various strategies and potential I attribute to Delia

This essay explores the benefits of teaching and learning Latin American theatre in dialogue with film. Specifically, I discuss the dialogue between documentary modes of performance in the context of interdisciplinary courses on human rights and the arts that I have designed and taught in a Latin American studies program at American University. In my courses, I introduce theatre as a fundamental paradigm

Since Rodolfo Usigli’s El gesticulador (1938), the theaters of Mexico City and elsewhere have served as a staging ground for the re-thinking and re-presentation of past episodes of Mexican history. Over the years, I have developed a course titled “Contemporary Mexican Theatre: Staging the Past,” in which graduate students and advanced undergraduates read and discuss plays that revive certain historical

In some theatre communities in Latin America, devised projects (creación colectiva) became a dominant presence throughout the 1960s-1980s, grounding a practice that remains fundamental today, though such work presents a challenge to study in traditional, script-based classrooms. For those of us who work with Latin American theatre in an academic setting in the United States and who would like to give