Latin American Theatre Review

Staging Frontiers: The Making of Modern Popular Culture in Argentina and Uruguay presents a carefully researched history of Creole drama, from the late 19^th century into the first decades of the 20^th, throughout the River Plate region of Latin America. Acree's study offers an overview and analysis of a performance phenomenon that "effectively put the countryside onstage and represented the transformations the region's export boom and economic modernization were exacting not just on traditional ways of life but also on broader understandings of community" (3). This history of "popular culture on the move" (171) describes the musical presentation of dramas featuring gauchos and rural themes. These shows fostered the development of a theater-going entertainment culture in Argentina and Uruguay and left a legacy that has carried into radio shows, film, and television, among other forms of contemporary popular culture.

Written in a clear and accessible style, Acree's study is divided into three parts: the history of drama and the emergence of Creole themes during the 17^th-19^th centuries; [End Page 152] the flourishing of Creole drama during the late 19^th-early 20^th centuries; and the legacy of Creole and nativist themes in Argentine and Uruguayan popular cultures. As the author describes in detail, Creole dramas grew out of the pomp and ceremony of Colonial viceregal and religious theater traditions and grew in popularity as inexpensive, popular entertainment that articulated social tensions around urbanization and immigration to Latin America during the late 19^th century. Creole theater troupes often featured immigrants as the principal actors as well as the entrepreneurs who ran such groups, resulting in a curiously performative concept of lo criollo as a nostalgic and yet fairly inclusive evocation of Creole culture (85, 99). After the decline of Creole drama due to the increasing popularity of other forms of entertainment, the influence of its themes could be seen in Creole clubs where men "play gaucho" (109), some of which continue to exist to this day, as well as films, radio shows, and even a brand of mate that translates Creole themes into entertainment forms for the region's growing middle class.

This study's archival depth highlights popular cultural phenomena that remain inaccessible to traditional literary studies, thus capturing the rise and continued influence of a genre that exists only partially in textual form. Within this expansive investigation, Acree might have further contrasted the late-century, gaucho-themed Creole dramas studied here with the canonical mid-century Romantic strains of the literatura gauchesca that was also popular in that region, as he does with the gauchesque drama at the beginning of the 19^th century. Nonetheless, Staging Frontiers' greatest strength lies in the archival work that reveals the heterogeneity of cultural production and the regional nature of the Creole circuses and dramas that played to crowds numbering in the thousands, as acting troupes moved around the coastline of the Río de la Plata. Indeed, this volume's emphasis on a regional context and the mobility of cultural practices will inform future cultural studies in the field. Acree's work is a compelling portrait of the birth of modern popular culture in the Río de la Plata and an invaluable contribution to 19^th and early 20^th-century studies.