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Memory, Allegory, and Testimony in South American Theater traces the shaping of a resistant identity in memory, its direct expression in testimony, and its indirect elaboration in two different kinds of allegory. Each chapter focuses on one contemporary playwright (or one collaborative team, in the case of Brazil) from each of four Southern Cone countries and compares the playwrights' aesthetic strategies for subverting ideologies of dictatorship: Carlos Manuel Varela (memory in Uruguay), Juan Radrigán (testimony in Chile), Augusto Boal and his co-author Gianfrancesco Guarnieri (historical allegory in Brazil), Griselda Gambaro (abstract allegory in Argentina).
List of contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: Carlos Manuel Varela and the Duty to Remember
Chapter Two: Boal and Guarnieri: Historical Allegory and the Duty to Inspire
Chapter Three: Griselda Gambaro: Abstract Allegory and the Duty to Conceal
Chapter Four: Juan Radrigán and the Duty to Tell
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Ana Elena Puga teachs in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University and recently published an anthology of translations of works by the Chilean playwright Juan Radrigán, Finished from the Start and Other Plays.
Summary
In this timely study, Puga compares contemporary Southern Cone playwrights and their aesthetic strategies for subverting ideologies of dictatorship; in the process, she traces the shaping of a resistant identity in memory, its direct expression in testimony, and its indirect elaboration in two different kinds of allegory.
Additional text
'Surveying recent productions of the plays in Italy, Argentina, Chile and the US, she persuasively demonstrates how culturally aware theatre practitioners imaginatively avoid folkloric and dehistoricized productions, and instead challenge non-Latin American audiences to think more politically about this region' – Theatre Research International
'In addition to the wealth of details that emerge from close reading, the specific performance details that emerge from her individual interviews are especially valuable' – Jon D. Rossini, Contemporary Theatre Review
