Latr 50 02 - Text PDF

SPRING 2016
1
LATIN
AMERICAN
THEATRE
REVIEW
50/2 Spring 2017
Contents
Special issue: Theatre on Screen, Cinema on Stage:

Cross-Genre Imaginaries in Contemporary Argentina
Preface: The Spaces Between
María Delgado............................................................................... 3
Editors’ Introduction
Jordana Blejmar and Cecilia Sosa................................................ 9
Ceci n’est pas une chaise: The Treachery of the Real

and the Conspicuously Cinematic Self in Mariano Pensotti’s
Cineastas
Philippa Page.............................................................................. 23
Dancing Affect in the Aftermath of Loss: El loro y el cisne

and Argentina’s Generation “In Between”
Cecilia Sosa................................................................................. 49
The Fantasy of the Real in Romina Paula’s Fauna

Brenda Werth............................................................................... 71
Matías Piñeiro’s Viola and the Resonant Drift of Love

Constanza Ceresa........................................................................ 87
Autofictions of Postwar: Fostering Empathy in

Lola Arias’ Minefield/Campo minado
Jordana Blejmar........................................................................ 103
Archipelago of Memories: Affective Travelogue

and Mourning in La forma exacta de las islas
Irene Depetris Chauvin.............................................................. 125
COPYRIGHT 2017 BY THE CENTER OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, LAWRENCE, KANSAS 66045, U.S.A.
2 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
Escuela de vida: Una conversación con Martín Rejtman y

Federico León
Cecilia Sosa............................................................................... 139
Afterword: The Transmedial and the Communitarian

Joanna Page.............................................................................. 155
Interviews
Entrevista con el dramaturgo, director y compositor argentino Gonzalo
Demaría: “Los opuestos se atraen, no se rechazan”
Jorge Dubatti............................................................................. 159
“Esa era la idea: que después, como una receta, quedara

esta confesión”: Entrevista a Ana Correa del Grupo
Cultural Yuyachkani
Elena Guichot Muñoz................................................................ 179
Entrevista a Mario Cantú Toscano

Alfonso Varona........................................................................... 187
American Theatre on a Latin Beat: Interviewing Pregones

After 38 Years on the Stages of New York
Beatriz J. Rizk............................................................................ 201
Festival Report
XXXI Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Cádiz 2016:
celebrando la memoria
Miguel Ángel Giella................................................................... 217
In Memoriam
Juan Radrigán: su trayectoria e inquietudes
Pedro Bravo-Elizondo............................................................... 229
Otra pérdida para el Teatro Nacional de Chile: Egon Wolff

Pedro Bravo-Elizondo............................................................... 231
Miriam Colón: Puerto Rican Icon and Theatrical Traveler

Jason Ramírez............................................................................ 233
Book Reviews......................................................................................... 239

SPRING 2017 3
Preface: The Spaces Between
María Delgado
It is impossible to consider Argentine theatre without folding in some

discussion of film. Any discussion of 21st century Argentine cinema simi-
larly touches theatrical motifs and prisms. It’s not simply about actors—like
María Villar, Pilar Gamboa, Esteban Lamothe, Julian Tello, and Esteban
Bigliardi, among many others—whose performative ethos has been shaped
by both. Dramatists like Walter Jakob and Santiago Loza also work in film,
as an actor and director, respectively. These kinds of crossovers are just
the tip of the fertile exchange that characterises Buenos Aires’ creative arts
culture. The essays featured in this collection point to wider currents and
exchanges. Romina Paula and Lola Arias work as performers, writers, and
directors across both stage and screen cultures. Alejo Moguillansky works as
a writer, director, and editor in cinema, but theatre spills into his films through
plotting, performance, and intertextuality, disrupting their surface realism in
playful, impish ways. The boundaries between these art forms, as the spatial
configurations of Buenos Aires indicate, are hugely porous. Part of this has
to do with the city’s lithe and improvisational theatre culture. Productions
shift from venue to venue. A production may “take a break” when actors are
filming, or play one or two days a week or play late in the evening—it’s not
unusual to be heading to a performance at 11:30 p.m. Buenos Aires lives and
breathes theatre—from the proscenium arch venues of central Corrientes to the
Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires’ (CTBA) cluster of theaters to the plethora
of fringe theatres that can be found in the Abasto. For a decade the Abasto
was home both to Buenos Aires’ independent film festival, the Buenos Aires
Festival Internacional de Cine (BAFICI), and the city’s alternative theaters,
and BAFICI’s origins can be linked to Buenos Aires’s biennial international
theatre festival, the Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires (FIBA).
Both alternative theatre and the New Argentine cinema are built on a
culture of thrift, of making do and improvising with the means you have
at your disposal. All the works discussed in this volume are lean and fo-
cused—nothing superfluous, nothing wasted—and they are often marked
by an approach to artistic creation that may be branded around the writer/
director but is effectively realised in the rehearsal room or on location through
group creation. Minefield (2016) and El loro y el cisne (2013) both show this
process at work. This strategy also spills over into the multifarious roles that
the artists featured in this collection occupy: directors work as producers
or editors on the films of their contemporaries; actors direct and directors
act; and groups of actors—ensembles of sorts—feature across the works of
Romina Paula and Matías Piñeiro.
The essays in this collection handle a range of productions (across both
film and theatre) that articulate the intersections between history, memory,
and fiction that have been so prevalent in Argentina’s creative arts over the
past decade. The stages are varied. In La forma exacta de las islas (2012),
the Falkland Islands/Malvinas are the theater for a quest narrative where the
road movie and travelogue meld together. Lola Arias’s Minefield also returns
to the Falklands/Malvinas, only the islands are here a space of memory
and recollection, a place that is conjured through props and photographs,
newspaper cuttings and pop songs. Communities are created through per-
formance—whether it’s the Argentine and British veterans in Minefield or
the family forged through film in Moguillansky’s El loro y el cisne. Com-
munity—what it means, how to forge, and sustain it—is key to the works
covered in the volume. Community, of course, was central to the oldest
documented theatrical cultures of Western Europe. Theatre’s origins lie at the
interface of democracy and performance. A way for a community to debate
the key issues of the time—issues of governance, ethics, and responsibility,
of history, memory, and representation. As with the ancient Greek theatre
of Dionysus, the stages discussed in this issue offer the space to debate the
foundations on which post-dictatorship Argentina has been built. The spaces
between theatre and film that Piñeiro, Arias, Paula, Mariano Pensotti, Martín
Rejtman, and Federico León all negotiate are the places in-between, the gaps
between the said and unsaid, the place where iteration can begin, where a
conversation commences.
Indeed, as with the Greeks, modes of rewriting the past as a mode of coming
to terms with its fissures and vicissitudes looms large across many of the works
discussed. Minefield debates the complex ways in which the past is constructed
SPRING 2017 5
and how a space might be constructed that moves beyond the victor/victim,
them/us binaries that have dominated representations of the Malvinas/Falk-
lands conflict. Processes of historicisation, of thinking through the relationship
between thinking and making, of how we relate to our inheritance and the ways
in which we refashion it run through all the essays. What Jorge Dubatti terms
“la transteatralización” (Martyunik), a turn to blur the boundaries between
the theatre and life, offers a way of recognising the potency of performance,
and its way of disrupting both social and political spaces.
Forms of representation are tried and tested, twisted and reformed. Cecilia
Sosa describes El loro y el cisne as a “contorted musical.” Matías Piñeiro’s
Viola (2012)—the second of his four shakespeareanas, or playful riffs on
Shakespeare’s comedies—is both a statement on the repetition and rehearsal
that marks contemporary life—rituals, routines, and the need to master a
technique, a routine, or an act—and a celebration of the need for improvi-
sation and spontaneity. Debating cultural heritage and inherited ideals, the
film seeks to position cultural heritage as sitting beyond an Argentine trope,
within a wider, shared canon of work that travels across national boundaries
in a process of interaction and intersection. Close-ups intrude to disrupt the
piece’s theatrical texture, moving to ensure the viewer’s perspective darts
and dives, shifts and moves, creating a sense of the unexpected and the
unpredictable. The sensation is exhilarating; it is on the one hand as if we
were seeing Twelfth Night for the first time, reimagined and reassembled in
a configuration where, as Constanza Ceresa notes, “Reality and fiction are
merged to the point of becoming indistinguishable.”
The rehearsal is a dominant trope in much of the work showcased here.
The conversation between Rejtman and León around their collaboration on
Entrenamiento elemental para actores sees the rehearsal as an ongoing process
of negotiation and collaboration, a way of thinking through the politics of
representation across both media. Paula’s play Fauna (2013) also tackles the
ways in which the real and the performative interweave, making it increasingly
difficult to discern where one begins and the other ends. Brenda Werth signals
how Paula’s intertextuality—including the incorporation of references to a
range of literary figures, from Calderón de la Barca to Shakespeare—points
to cultures of doubling and impersonation where it is not always easy to tell
where a shift from “acting to non-acting” has taken place.
Vivi Tellas’s biodramas merge documentary and fiction to offer a version
of verbatim theatre where the protagonists of the actions re-enact experiences
in modes that offer agency and creativity. Pensotti’s Cineastas (2013) also
offers a way of considering, through the narrative of four filmmakers working

on their films over a year, the ways in which we author the fictions of our
own lives. For Philippa Page, Pensotti’s deployment of cinema, installation
art, and theatre in Cineastas offers a way of rethinking the spatiality of all
three media/genres “to create a performative map of the city.”
These essays give a taste of currents that are still in evidence in Argentine
theatre and film. Piñeiro’s latest shakepeareana, Hermia & Helena (2016),
riffs on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Only now he has moved from Buenos
Aires to New York, following the adventures and misadventures of two
porteñas (Carmen and Camila, played by Piñeiro regulars Villar and Agus-
tina Muñoz) as Camila takes up residency in New York, where she is tasked
with producing a new version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play’s
language offers her a way of trying to make sense of the predicament she
finds herself in, with an ex in Buenos Aires, a New York lover, and a father
with whom she has lost touch. Once again, adept theatricality and impish
role play intersect in a playful tale of loves lost, discarded, and forsaken
with Shakespeare’s pastoral idyll wittily re-envisaged in a New York park.
Nele Wohlatz’s El futuro presente, winner of the Filmmakers of the Present
section at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival, follows a Chinese immigrant to
Buenos Aires. Xiaobin arrives from mainland China to join her family with-
out knowing Spanish. They isolate themselves in the laundromat they run,
but she is determined to learn Spanish—putting away some of her earnings
from the supermarket where she works to enroll at a language school. The
other Chinese members of her Spanish class are both a mirror and a chorus,
in the latter case commenting on her predicament and articulating how com-
munity may operate outside her close-knit, secluded family. The language
school becomes a rehearsal room of sorts for Xiaobin’s new identity. Her
contact with Vijay, an Indian migrant, adds a further layer to the narrative,
a way of testing out her new identity through a new language. The film’s
title speaks to different ways of seeing, and Xiaobin’s new name—she tries
out both Sabrina and Beatriz—offers both a way of articulating her desire to
assimilate and a way of erasing something of her former self. Theatre here,
as it did a decade earlier in León and Marcos Martínez’s Estrellas (2007),
offers ways of seeing those so often erased from the picture, those whose
lives are given to others to perform. In Estrellas, these concerns are filtered
through class; in El futuro presente it is migration that emerges as the lens
through which the film’s “others” are refracted. Indeed, both these films,
like the works discussed in this volume, point to the ways in which theatre
SPRING 2017 7
continues to function as a way of seeing, a mode of questioning, a discourse

that rattles and disrupts the surface realism of celluloid.
Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
Work Cited
Martyunik, Claudio. “El teatro argentino se lleva bien con la insatisfacción.” Clarín,
5 March 2006. Accessed 12 Dec. 2008.
Coloquio Internacional “Realidades y alusiones del texto teatral.

Estudios sobre la dramaturgia contemporánea en España e
Hispanoamérica”
Universidad Masaryk, Brno (República Checa), 5 - 7 de octubre de 2017
El Departamento de Lenguas y Literaturas Románicas de la Facultad de

Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Masaryk de Brno celebrará un coloquio
internacional con el título “Realidades y alusiones del texto teatral. Estudios
sobre la dramaturgia contemporánea en España e Hispanoamérica”. El coloquio
coincidirá con la celebración del “Festival scénického čtení Specific” (Festival
de Lecturas Dramatizadas), que ofrecerá al público checo lecturas dramatizadas
de autores españoles como Rodrigo García, Victoria Szpunberg, Juan Mayorga,
Alberto Conejero, Pablo Gisbert, Carlos Contreras Elvira y Angélica Liddell.
El objeto de estudio del coloquio serán los textos teatrales escritos o repre-
sentados en los últimos años, con especial interés en aquellos que problematizan
la relación entre texto y escena. Es llamativo que, en el cambio de paradigma
estético que afronta el teatro de las últimas décadas y del que la teoría se ha
ocupado con más prolijidad que uniformidad (Schechner, Sarrazac, Rancière,
Nancy, Guénoun, Lehmann, Dubatti, Fischer-Lichte, Cornago, etc.), la interpre-
tación del concepto de lo “real” (en oposición a lo artificial, pero también a lo
ficticio, e incluso a lo inmaterial) adquiere una relevancia destacada.
Las ponencias tendrán una extensión máxima de 20 minutos, seguidas por
10 minutos de debate. Las personas interesadas en presentar una comunicación
deberán enviar sus propuestas de una extensión de 200 a 250 palabras especifi-
cando claramente el objetivo, el marco teórico y la metodología seguidos, así
como un breve perfil académico del autor a la dirección coloquio-dramaturg-
ia@phil.muni.cz
Una selección de las contribuciones presentadas será publicada como dos-
sier temático en uno de los próximos números de la revista Études romanes de
Brno.
La cuota de inscripción:
● 2000 CZK para ponentes (aprox. 75 EUR)
● 1000 CZK para asistentes sin comunicación (aprox. 37 EUR)
Información actualizada en la página: http://www.phil.muni.cz/wurj/home/
coloquio-dramaturgia-realidades
SPRING 2017 9
Editors’ Introduction
Jordana Blejmar and Cecilia Sosa
This special issue is the result of a series of screenings titled Meeting

the Directors: Dialogues Between New Argentine Cinema & Theatre, held in
2013 at Senate House in London. A joint venture between the Institute of Latin
American Studies and the Institute of Modern Languages Research, both part
of the University of London, the screenings were open to the general pub-
lic and were designed to explore the dialogues and exchanges taking place
between the so-called New Argentine Cinema and the less-well-known New
Argentine Theatre. The series was the first time that such a range of diverse
experimental productions had been shown in the United Kingdom alongside
conversations with the young directors, who were either present at the venue
or interviewed via video conferences on the day of the screenings.
This special issue builds on those conversations, identifying an upcom-
ing genre in contemporary Argentine cultural production, one that is marked
by a hybrid aesthetics, a blending of fact and fiction, a playful spirit, and
transnational dialogues that take place on both stage and screen. The vari-
ous contributions included in this publication highlight the innovative uses
of technology, humour, live music, and dance in this up-and-coming body of
work, one that, over the last few years, has challenged the rigidity of generic
boundaries. The essays engage critically with a particular series of films and
theatrical pieces by directors such as Romina Paula, Lola Arias, Mariano
Pensotti, Alejo Moguillansky, Matías Piñeiro, Edgardo Dieleke, and Daniel
Casabé, among others. While most of these pieces were screened at Senate
House, some of them, such as Campo minado (Minefield), which debuted in
2016 in the UK, were included especially for this issue. It is our contention
that together these works exemplify the emergence of a fresh and exciting
generational, transnational, and trans-disciplinary voice within Argentine
performing arts.
Beyond New Argentine Cinema and Biodrama

While the emergence and development of the so-called New Argentine
Cinema during the 1990s and the new millennium have received consider-
able attention from local and international scholars, critics have suggested
that this trend has recently reached a standstill. As Jens Andermann has
pointed out: “[A]fter the cusp of social and political emergency in Argentina
had passed and the initial excitement had worn off, critics could predictably
do little but detect the ‘exhaustion’ of the very movement they had conjured
up” (xxi). Thus, Andermann concludes, “the time has perhaps arrived for
looking at new Argentine cinema without the capital letters” (xxi). In con-
trast to the arguable exhaustion of New Argentine Cinema, a community
of Argentine theatre-practitioners and young filmmakers has fashioned a
unique and lively creative space within both the domestic market and major
international festivals. In the current post-New Argentine Cinema period,
this collection of essays addresses the way in which cinema and theatre
have been experiencing a fruitful exchange of interests, directors, writers,
castings, and audiences, giving room to a new circuit that renovates and
enhances both art forms.
More specifically, this dossier examines how a playful overlapping of
documentary and fiction has managed to push forward and reanimate not
only the ostensible wave of neo-realist stories and dry humour introduced by
New Argentine Cinema, but also a particular form of documentary theatre
that has come to be known as “biodrama.” The term was originally coined
by director Vivi Tellas to describe a series of biographical pieces in which
performers re-enacted episodes of their real lives on stage. As Philippa Page
points out in her contribution, Tellas coined the term “biodrama” in 2002 as
a response to the critical aftermath of the economic and political crisis of
2001. Page argues that biodrama “uses theatre to explore the possibilities of
rebuilding a sense of community [. . .] in what was, at the time of its incep-
tion, a severely debilitated post-crisis social fabric.” For Tellas, the return
of experience was also the return of the personal, albeit a particular type of
self, one immersed in politics and culture.
Many of the films and theatrical plays studied in this issue could argu-
ably be considered enhanced forms of biodrama. However, they have ac-
quired new and more sophisticated individual characteristics as well as a
collective sense of belonging and status. For that reason, we suggest that
they not only be analyzed in relation to the original biodrama trend but also
that they be seen as having their own distinct characteristics. As many of the
SPRING 2017 11
pieces studied in this issue demonstrate, the real lives of the directors and
those of their fictional characters play a continual game of hide-and-seek
in this new body of work, confusing and blending fact and fiction, autobi-
ography and imagination in ways rarely evident in previous productions.
This trend is particularly notable in Moguillansky’s film El loro y el cisne,
in which the real biographies of the performers function as embodied back
curtains from which fiction re-emerges. In many cases, the autobiographi-
cal playfully re-enters the realm of the fictional, simultaneously regaining
an extra testimonial power. This enhanced form of truth resonates between
stages and screens, generating novel forms of spectatorship.
In sum, cinema beyond New Argentine Cinema and theatre beyond bio-
drama constitute the main shifting paths along which this new body of work
can be traced. To define the main features of the pieces that comprise this
new genre, we could arguably say that they are neither completely testimo-
nial nor autobiographical accounts but rather auto-fictional performances.
They are made out of the fabric of the real but are more playful and imagi-
nary than realistic. They are clearly “Argentine” and especially porteños but
also proudly cosmopolitan. They are ultimately subjective but also highly
political and communitarian.
Kirchnerism and Aesthetic Autonomy

The body of work addressed in this issue was mostly produced during
the administrations of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernán-
dez de Kirchner (2007-2015), a highly controversial political period that
supporters championed as “la década ganada” and detractors dismissed as
“la década perdida.” While episodes of corruption have overshadowed the
legacies of the Kirchners, certain issues that were not at the forefront of the
state’s concerns during the 1990s took centre stage in their political agenda.
These issues included Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas/Falkland Is-
lands, the trials against perpetrators of human rights violations committed
during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, and a progressive legal frame-
work in relation to social equality, including a universal child allowance,
same-sex marriage, and fertilisation and gender-transition laws.
With the novel intervention of the state as a safe keeper of certain pro-
gressive political rights and values, the field of art and culture allowed itself
to be less “testimonial,” more playful, and even more irreverent with previ-
ously sacred topics of Argentina’s traumatic past. Arias’ performances, Pen-
sotti’s sophisticated installations, and Casabé’s and Dieleke’s melancholic
“mourning film” are good examples of the new relationship between aes-
thetics and politics established during this period.
The articles included in this issue also show to what extent the Kirch-
nerist years included a performative element. As Cecilia Sosa argues in her
essay, there was something very corporeal about Kirchnerism, something
that brought to light a new idea of performance and redefined the meaning
of the Spanish expression “poner el cuerpo.” Indeed, as sociologist María
Pía López contends, during the neoliberal 1990s it was difficult to imagine
“modos de la política que impliquen apuestas corporales” (79). Despite no-
table exceptions, such as the escraches organized by the children of the dis-
appeared within the group HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra
el Olvido y el Silencio), the 1990s was mainly a decade when politics be-
came a spectacle that people watched passively on television screens from
the comfort of their homes: “[C]uerpos encerrados en el hogar y conectados
con lo público a través de la recepción” (López 79). By contrast, during
the Kirchnerist era, the multitudes resurfaced, exhibiting a joyful sense of
coming together. This highly controversial period brought back the idea of
remaking the street and using bodies to re-appropriate public spaces with
political and affective encounters. Simultaneously, the period also became
the contested arena of many confrontations between defenders and detrac-
tors of the government, often revealing political and social tensions that had
been tamed but remained latent in Argentine society.
In December 2015, centre-right businessman and former football club
president Mauricio Macri took office, putting forward a regressive politi-
cal and economic programme with the explicit aim to “deskirchnerizar” the
country. In the current political and cultural context, the corporeal flair that
defined the Kirchner years became a new form of resistance, as illustrated,
for example, by the ongoing “abrazos públicos” and mass demonstrations
led by school teachers, workers, and women. In fact, triggered by the con-
straints imposed by neoliberal agendas, the feminist irruption had a novel
international impact, evident in the massive demonstration on October 16,
2016, and also on March 8, 2017, during International Women’s Day.
It is worth noting, however, that even in the political context of recent
years, most of the directors whose work is addressed here managed to re-
main loyal to some sort of aesthetic autonomy. With some exceptions, these
productions have engaged with controversial issues of the past in a com-
pletely novel way, reluctant to deal with those themes explicitly, as if pro-
tecting a playful tone from contamination by over-exposed political ques-
SPRING 2017 13
tions. The autonomy of subjects and styles among this wave of directors
became a sort of aesthetic platform that subtly addressed, if not ignored, the
demands from many Kirchnerist artists and practitioners for a political revi-
sion of the past. This apparent disengagement has been, paradoxically, their
silent political platform. In this regard, the trend seems to have followed
Albertina Carri’s groundbreaking film Los rubios (2003), released at the
beginning of Kirchnerismo, and the way in which the actress who plays the
director’s role in the film expresses a feeling of “tiredness” when confronted
with the testimonies of the survivors of the dictatorship and the discourses
of the past that had governed the field for so many years. In similar ways,
both Carri’s film and the productions analyzed here have sought to refresh
the ways in which aesthetics engage with politics and speak to new genera-
tions with a renovated language, thus shedding light on an alternative way
of being political.
A New Hybrid Genre

The new genre that we identify in this issue involves the multi-layered
circulation of subjects, styles, and techniques (in)between cinema and the-
atre. Firstly, the sense of contagion between these two fields is accompanied
by the physical presence of cinematic screens within theatre productions as
well as “theatrical echoes” within cinema. Filmmakers explore dramaturgy,
while theatre directors make incursions into film production. Similarly, ac-
tors from both fields move from one territory to the other, bringing to each
medium techniques and styles learned as part of their respective training
and their work on stage or in front of the camera. Second, the inclusion of
experimental episodes of live music, poetry, and dance within both cinema
and theatre acts as a “surprising resource” that fosters a sense of commu-
nity among the practitioners and challenges the purity of traditional genres.
Third, the directors of the productions addressed are “children” of the digital
age and, as a result, have been trained to work across diverse media. The use
of new technologies and new media in both fields enhances the generational
mark of this body of work and blurs the boundaries between virtual realities
and the physical realm in their narratives. Fourth, the recurrence of a play-
ful and comical style nurtures the self-referential imprint of these produc-
tions in contrast with the dry sense of humour typical of many neo-realist
New Argentine Cinema productions. Fifth, this cross-pollination between
film and theatre generates new and wider audiences committed to the spirit
of experimentation that characterizes the genre. More specifically, far from
passive forms of spectatorship, this body of work stimulates its audience on

an intellectual and emotional level with inter-textual references and affec-
tive triggers. Thus, the spectators become crucial allies of these productions.
As Jacques Rancière argues in The Emancipated Spectator, spectators also
act: they participate and refashion the performance in their own way, as
if completing a poem. Thus, many of these productions redefine what we
understand by “testimony” or “writings of the self,” changing the rules of
autobiography and blending self-exposure with (auto)fictional poetics and
experimental strategies.
From Buenos Aires to the Global World

Together with the aforementioned attributes, this up-and-coming circuit
of practitioners has built a sense of belonging, for the most part related to
and engaging with the megacity of Buenos Aires. At the same time, how-
ever, these film and theatre makers have produced their work in close dia-
logue with counterparts in Europe, as well as with some productions and
independent trends in the United States, via the circuit of international festi-
vals, where Argentine “products” are presented (and seen) in a very different
context. Indeed, most of the artists and directors have studied and some-
times lived in different European and US cities, acquiring new languages
and familiarizing themselves with the cultural landscapes and affective id-
iosyncrasies of each place. A case in point is Piñeiro, who has lived in New
York since 2011 but regularly returns to Buenos Aires to shoot his films.
In his series of Shakespearean comedies (Rosalinda, Viola, La Princesa de
Francia), these global classics are relocated to the Argentine capital and
reinterpreted from a gendered and sometimes queer perspective. Similarly,
Arias lives and works intermittently in Buenos Aires, Berlin, and London.
Some of her plays, notably Mi vida después and El año que nací, were
also performed in different locations, retaining the original idea (what she
calls “a portable concept”) but changing the actors, the language, and the
historical events addressed. The theme of globalized identities, polyglots,
and transnational places is also explicitly tackled in works such as Airport
Kids (2008), Mucamas (2010-2011), and Ciudades paralelas (2010-2011).
In both Campo minado and Dieleke’s and Casabé’s La forma exacta de las
islas the issue of national identities and affective territories is also the focus
of the plots.
Taken together, the productions addressed in this issue mobilize trans-
national dialogues that also involve affective forms of contagion and trans-
SPRING 2017 15
mission: from Piñeiro’s reversions and re-inventions of Shakespeare in Bue-

nos Aires to the contestation and mockery of the American way of cultural
production displayed in Moguillansky’s latest film, to Paula’s revisiting of
Dickens in El tiempo todo entero and the way in which she plays out the
fantasy of more beautiful and blurred gender possibilities in Fauna. As a re-
sult, this body of work crosses interdisciplinary boundaries at the same time
it introduces emergent Latin American paradigms to the English-speaking
world. Given the transnational nature of the corpus, many of these produc-
tions raise important questions about the act of making theatre in marginal
locations, as well as questions about translation and trans-culturation. More
than that, these works also manage to play back their own sense of precari-
ousness and occasional marginality, transforming it into the focal point of a
rebellious and sometimes ludicrous fight that playfully destabilizes gender
positions, locations, and accounts of the self beyond trauma. In this sense,
it can be argued that many of these productions emerge from what the post-
colonial critic Homi Bhabha called the “third space,” a process of “cul-
tural hybridity that gives rise to something different, something new and
unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation”
(Rutheford 211).
Born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of these filmmakers and
theatre directors graduated from La Fundación Universidad de Cine (FUC)
in Buenos Aires during the mid-1990s. “Cuando nosotros empezábamos a
estudiar actuación, el cine y el teatro eran dos esferas separadas. No había
actores de teatro en el cine. Y esto cambió completamente, ahora hay una
circulación natural entre los dos espacios,” says Paula in an interview quot-
ed in Brenda Werth’s contribution. As Piñeiro puts it in another interview,
“[Y]o trabajo en Argentina con actores que son muy buenos, pero que además
montan sus obras de maneras similares a como yo filmo mis películas. Hay
una conexión, una identificación” (“Una entrevista”). In his latest film, El
escarabajo de oro, Moguillansky blends film and theatre by featuring a
community of friends and artists who appear as themselves. To some extent,
this form of production can be seen as a strategy that confronts a precari-
ous network of funding. “Hay un prejuicio de que somos chicos ricos que
nos gusta filmar,” says Moguillansky (Firpo). And he goes on: “Me doy el
lujo de filmar, pero al precio de poner en riesgo mi economía constante-
mente.” As in most of his productions, there were no salaries involved and
he used his family and friends to create the film. He proudly argues that his
films share the same “moral identity.” Thus, the circulation and exchange
of names, themes, and skills become “natural” and a key feature of this new
genre.
Many of the directors also prefer to exhibit their productions within
cultural venues such as the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Ai-
res (MALBA) or the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA),
both of which usually feature independent directors. Some of the films have
also been shown at the annual Independent Film Festival of Buenos Aires
(BAFICI), inaugurated in 1999. In one of the scenes from Moguillansky’s
El escarabajo de oro, which won the award for Best Film at the festival,
the theatre director and performer Rafael Spregelburd, who plays the role
of one of the actors, refers to those “artistas argentinos que van a Europa a
ganar un par de Euros,” the directors who “muestran sus producciones en
salas tan pequeñas a las que nadie va [y] que hacen ese tipo de película que
a nadie le importa.” This crucial and revelatory self-reflexive moment in the
film might also describe a whole community of producers and artists who
have learned to play with their marginality and make it the centre of their
fantasies and their sophisticated, postcolonial work.
A Novel Subjectivity and a Feeling of Community

One of the main hypotheses present in these articles is that this genera-
tion of artists (theatre-doers and filmmakers but also performers and musi-
cians) has revealed the emergence of a new type of subjectivity. They were
born during or after the 1976-1983 dictatorship and are mostly contempo-
raries of the generation of the children of the disappeared, but they have
reacted to the resonances of trauma in their own terms. As their productions
show, they are capable of being playful, irreverent, and even narcissistic.
To some extent, they have explored that recent history mostly as outsiders
or bystanders. At the same time, however, not only have they approached
the traumatic past in subtle ways within their sophisticated stories but they
have also transformed them into enhanced fictions, a move evident, for ex-
ample, in Pensotti’s and Arias’ work. The freedom of playing with postco-
lonial identities and bringing into play more fluid gender fantasies and real
lives is another focal point of this new wave of prestigious directors. This
renovation might also be a way of attracting funding from festivals abroad
and appealing to international audiences. In this struggle, they have also
transformed the materiality of the local traumatic past into fictional layers of
transnational tropes that circulate and provide new bursts of energy to their
mischievous productions.
SPRING 2017 17
Some critics have accused this ludic approach to the traumatic past of
being self-absorbed, disrespectful to victims, egoistic, and apolitical. The
authors of these works have been also accused of being a bunch of elitist
children. However, it would be unfair and narrow-minded to reduce their
complex body of work to such a judgmental and moralistic view. This new
group of directors has instead managed to bring to light a new body of work
that blurs the boundaries between theatre and cinema, reading and writing,
producing and directing. They are also the free heirs of a traumatized gen-
eration who have learned to tell stories and approach the real with a new
affective tone. Coinciding with a political period that transformed memory
into a national and official state platform, they have managed to reinvent
themselves within global theatrical trends and markets, at the same time
reinventing updated narratives of collective memory and challenging posi-
tions of gender, politics, and transnational belonging.
In sum, this new body of work defines a generation of artists who are not
afraid of playing with disparate materials and of making fiction out of them.
Moreover, this group of directors shares a way of working and producing
that has a certain element of camaraderie. Thus, most of their productions
become an exaltation of friendship and a space for joy and experimentation.
This Issue
In the first article of the issue, Philippa Page analyses the complex re-
lationships between fiction and reality, theatre and life, stages and screens,
virtual and organic spaces, as well as experience and imagination in Maria-
no Pensotti’s theatrical piece Cineastas (2013), a biodrama that she sees as
emblematic of a new generational gaze in Argentine theatre. In her words,
“Pensotti casts out existing categories and asks us to consider the more in-
tegral role that virtual spaces, such as cinema, play in making contemporary
worlds, inflecting both our sense of being in and (dis)belonging to a specific
place.” For Page, this piece exposes the fact that “reality must be drama-
tized, or performed, in order to be thought (stripped of its theatrical artifice,
that is).” This aspect of Pensotti’s performance, what Jorge Dubatti calls
la teatralización of life, defines, in fact, many of the pieces addressed in
this publication. For Arias, we are all somehow performers in our everyday
lives and the re-enactment of real lives on stage highlights that performative
nature of our existence.
Cecilia Sosa analyses El loro y el cisne, Alejo Moguillanksy’s quirky
and hilarious film, which presents the rehearsals of the experimental dance
company Krapp. Sosa argues that the enfolded puzzle of screens, stages,
and lives at stake in the film sheds light on an upcoming hybrid genre within
Argentine contemporary cultural production. In particular, she examines
how the local version of a classic ballet fable provides a playful overlap
between documentary and fiction, simultaneously calling into question tra-
ditional boundaries across the arts. In dialogue with Bhabha’s postcolonial
literary theory and insights from affect studies, she shows how El loro can
be read as a powerful critique of what it means to be an artist in Latin Ameri-
can postcolonial landscapes. Ultimately, she argues that the never-ending
layers of documentary and fiction address the aftermath of the dictatorship
with a new affective and generational language. Sosa’s piece also helps to
conceptualize the “corporeal” turn that characterized the Kirchner years.
She makes the case that Moguillansky’s documentation of dancing bodies
on stage becomes expressive of epidemic tensions among regionalization,
globalization, and renationalization. In this context, she argues that these
bodily encounters stand as an exploration of broader intensities that awak-
ened during the Kirchnerist administrations, which witnessed a rediscov-
ered passion for the collective.
In the following article, Brenda Werth offers a reading of Romina Pau-
la’s acclaimed piece Fauna. For Werth, “while works by Argentine artists
such as Vivi Tellas, Lola Arias, Mariano Pensotti, and Federico León seek
creative opportunities for the real to interrupt and ultimately break down the
theatrical frame, Paula’s Fauna offers a poetic reflection on what this slip-
page between the real and the fictional means, and indeed what it means to
aspire toward capturing the real through performance.” Werth’s understand-
ing of “the real” is more sophisticated than the mere intrusion of “real lives”
in theatre. She sees the “real” “as an ephemeral flash of ineffable truth; as a
strategy belonging to both fiction and non-fiction; as a sensation constructed
through biographical intimacy; and as a normative category, against which
characters in Paula’s play enact the fantasy of gender.” With a specific focus
on the relationship between gender and the real and Judith Butler’s concep-
tual framework, Werth argues that “Fauna provides the fantasy of a new
gender in which the masculine and feminine are blended, reconfigured in
new combinations, and made indistinguishable in the form of a ‘beautiful,
impressive’ being.” As Werth contends, Paula’s work forces us to think more
critically about “the real” in contemporary theatre as a way of exposing its
limitations and surreptitious normativity.
SPRING 2017 19
Constanza Ceresa focuses on Matías Piñeiro’s Viola and the way the
piece constructs meaning through intertextual references to Shakespeare’s
plays and local texts, blurred boundaries between cinema and theatre, being
and appearance, reality and artifice, and “an unstable affective network in
which bodies, sounds, and gazes contaminate characters’ everyday lives.”
Like Werth, Ceresa looks at the way this piece creates “an indiscernible
zone where gender identities and meaning are dissolved,” or at least con-
tested. For Ceresa, in the task of redefining identities or re-writing classical
texts, repetition and iteration play a central role as a way of de-naturalising
habits and discourses. This idea is in tune with Arias’ concept of the “re-
make,” or the idea that re-enacting past events always implies the subver-
sion of the original reference.
The last two articles offer a post-dictatorship generational reading of
two contemporary works of theatre and cinema that address the same event,
the Malvinas/Falklands War. In her study of Campo minado, Jordana Blej-
mar argues that by showcasing an unprecedented collaboration of former
enemies on stage, Lola Arias challenges the dichotomies often present in
previous accounts of the conflict—victims/perpetrators, allies/enemies,
heroes/villains, spectators/actors, subjective memory/historical memory—
and delivers a play that avoids Manichean readings of that painful history as
well as dangerous discourses on forgetting and reconciliation. For Blejmar,
Arias not only successfully overcomes the risks that often accompany bio-
graphical pieces such as this one—over-identification, mimesis, and appro-
priation—with the aid of playful distancing devices, but also demonstrates
how theatre can become an affective space of empowerment and enuncia-
tion in which the marginal and vulnerable subject takes centre stage, thereby
gaining visibility and producing an empathic connection with the audience.
Finally, Irene Depetris Chauvin’s reading of La forma exacta de las
islas highlights how, unlike other films concerning the Malvinas/Falklands
War, this production “eludes the discourse of the ‘just cause’ and questions
the validity of the epic narrative.” Daniel Casabé and Egardo Dieleke’s film
looks at the conflict with a more melancholic gaze than Arias’ play. Accord-
ing to Depetris Chauvin, La forma exacta de las islas is indeed a “mourning
film,” an “affective travelogue,” and “a narrative of return” that explores
the islands by using two trips as the starting point of a personal quest. The
film also entwines fiction (in this case, the literary fictions written about the
war that the protagonist studied for her doctoral thesis) and reality (the real
lives of the veterans that accompany her during her first trip and her own
involvement with them, an engagement that produces a love story and an

unexpected tragedy). Through a careful exploration of the affective land-
scapes, cartographies, and geographies of the postwar proposed by the film,
Depetris Chauvin highlights another main feature of this corpus, namely
the transformation, after the 1976 coup, of the politically tense relationship
between the public and the private, the national and the intimate.
This issue also features an interview with theatre director and filmmaker
Federico León and filmmaker Martín Rejtman, authors of Entrenamiento
elemental para actores (2012), a short co-directed telefilm. This telefilm
was the result of a public initiative led by Argentine National Television in
2007, which brought together seven pairs of film and theatre directors with
the idea of creating a new collective piece. As Sosa argues, Entrenamiento
“es una obra pequeña, perfecta, casi imposible. El resultado de un encuentro
impredecible entre dos directores mañosos, obsesivos.” The short telefilm,
which became a cult object, addresses the process of an encounter between
friends and disciplinary fields. This non-normative piece features theatre
lessons for children led by an eccentric professor. Ludic and strangely per-
formative, Entrenamiento has moments of recklessness that make the piece
not only an improbable acting class for child-actors but also a school of life
for its entire audience. In the context of this issue, the interview marks the
beginning of a timely process of exchange between theatre and film, one
that has now become much more organic and that shapes the cross pollina-
tion of fields and disciplines that has marked subsequent years. The inter-
view was originally circulated alongside the script of the telefilm in a book
published by La Bestia Equilátera in 2012 and we are very grateful to the
editors for allowing us to include it here.
As the contributions of this issue demonstrate, the establishment of af-
fective bonds between directors, performers, and spectators not only speaks
about a novel genre in the performative arts, but also about new political
communities of resistance against social fragmentation, against the mere
pursuit of financial benefits, and against the resurgence of neoliberal forces
in Argentina.
University of Liverpool
Conicet/Untref, Argentina
SPRING 2017 21
Works Cited
Andermann, Jens. New Argentine Cinema. I.B. Tauris, 2011.

“Entrevista con Matías Piñeiro.” Otros cines, 13 July 2016,
Firpo, Javier. “Mano a mano con Alejo Moguillansky.” La Razón, 22 Dec. 2014.
López, María Pía. Mutantes: Trazos sobre los cuerpos. Colihue, 1997.
Rancière, Jacques. The Emancipated Spectator. Verso, 2009.
Rutheford, Jonathan. “The Third Space, An Interview with Homi Bhabha.” Identity,
Community, Culture, Difference, edited by J. Rutheford. Lawrence and Wis-
hart, 1990. 207-21.
La Asociación Mexicana de Investigación Teatral, el Centro Nacional de

Investigación Teatral Rodolfo Usigli y la Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez
convocan a investigadores, creadores, críticos, docentes, estudiantes y público
interesado a participar en el XXIII Congreso Internacional de Investigación
Teatral con el tema:
Las fronteras en el teatro: condición, contextos e intersecciones

del 11 al 13 de octubre de 2017 en las instalaciones de la Facultad de
Literatura Mexicana de la Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.
En esta ocasión pensamos en torno al fenómeno teatral y dramatúrgico a partir

del límite donde dos o más espacios diferentes entran en contacto y tensión
productiva, es decir, las fronteras como zonas de intensidades y afectos que
repercuten en las producciones simbólicas.
COORDENADAS TEMATICAS:
• Identidades fronterizas
• (Des)territorializaciones conceptuales
• Narrativas del exceso
• Violencia y securitización
• Posicionamientos éticos y políticos en la frontera
• El cuerpo como frontera
MODALIDADES DE PARTICIPACIÓN
1. Ponencias: no deberán exceder 8 cuartillas a doble espacio o 20 minutos de
exposición.
2. Ponencias sobre temática de grupos de trabajo.
3. Presentación de publicaciones.
MECÁNICA
Para ponencia enviar resumen de máximo una cuartilla y anexar semblanza de
5 líneas.
Fecha límite para recibir propuestas: 31 de mayo, enviar copia a los correos
electrónicos: gfuentesibarra.citru@inba.edu.mx, enriquemijares44@gmail.
com.
La notificación de aceptación se dará a conocer a más tardar el 30 de junio.
Después de la aceptación se recibirán las ponencias completas el 15 de septiembre.
CUOTAS
Socios activos y participantes nacionales: $1000 pesos; extranjeros: $100.00 US.
SPRING 2017 23
Ceci n’est pas une chaise: the Treachery of the Real and the
Conspicuously Cinematic Self in Mariano Pensotti’s Cineastas
Philippa Page
“So the beginning is an impossible place, as meaningless

as that dot on my drawing in a class perspective lesson,
the spot in the middle of the paper where all lines—roads,
streets?—came together at a place called infinity.”
—Dorothea Tanning, Birthday, 11.
“…la nube Magritte estaba exactamente suspendida sobre

Cazaneuve y entonces sentí una vez más que la pálida
naturaleza imitaba el arte ardiente...”
—Julio Cortázar, La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos, 15.
Introduction: Screen Realities

“The real must be fictionalized in order to be thought,” claims philosopher
Jacques Rancière in a statement that clearly points to the epistemological
interdependence of reality and fiction. Art constitutes, rather than represents,
reality; reality as it is perceived, at least (Politics 34). If, as Julio Cortázar
imagines in his playfully subversive La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos
(1967), nature pales in comparison to its vibrant and sense-tickling renditions
in art, then artistic representations can invariably seem more “real” than the
referent that they set out to portray. The importance of sensory organization
and stimulation is integral to Rancière’s interrogation of the role of aesthetics
in politics. “[A]esthetic acts” defined “as configurations of experience” contain
the potential to “create new modes of sense perception and induce novel forms
of political subjectivity,” a phenomenon he refers to as the “distribution of
the sensible” (Politics 3). One might conclude that in contemporary hybrid
worlds the distinction between fiction and reality is nothing more than a false
dichotomy, with little relevance to the way in which society experiences the
world—or worlds—constantly navigating back and forth across the appar-
ently seamless frontier between virtual and organic spaces. Does our almost
constant mobile exposure to screen media mean that we always perceive
through some kind of screen, whether real or imagined?
A variation on this debate translates to contemporary theatre studies in
Argentina, foregrounding theatre’s privileged capacity, as an embodied form
of expression, to explore and expose the theatricality inherent in intersub-
jective relations, not least of all in the image-conscious arena of politics;
reality must be dramatized, or performed, in order to be thought (stripped of
its theatrical artifice, that is). Theorist and theatre critic Jorge Dubatti pays
close attention to this phenomenon. During the last twenty years, he argues,
el teatro se vio en la obligación de redefinirse por una cantidad de
fenómenos. El primer fenómeno es lo que se ha llamado la transtea-
tralización: todo es teatro. Es más teatro el orden social que el teatro
mismo y, en ese sentido, el teatro ha sido “superado” por el orden de
lo real. (“El teatro” original emphasis)1
Such ideas echo the well-established work of the symbolic interactionists,
who approach social interaction from a dramaturgical perspective, positing
that intersubjective relationships can only be understood in terms of their
inherent theatricality. As Erving Goffman argued in the 1950s, in the mise en
scène of everyday life, society constantly transitions between what he termed
the “front” stage (the role we perform socially and the desired appearance
that this creates) (32) and the “back” stage (the space in which this role is
rehearsed and considered in private) (127).2
More recently, theorists in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of per-
formance studies have addressed this issue. Coming from an anthropological
perspective, performance theorist Richard Schechner articulates this debate
in terms of the boundary between what he defines as “aesthetic” performance
and “social” performance (192-3). He describes theatre as just one node on
a continuum of performance types—both social and aesthetic—pointing to
a certain fluidity between these two categories, which incorporate a range of
activities including the categories of “sport,” “play,” and “ritual,” alongside
artistic forms of performance (xvii).3
From within the field of theatre studies, it is important to note that this
exploration of theatricality at large is coupled with a need to reflect upon and
redefine theatre’s specificity as a genre and its relationship to this broader
social theatricality. This perceived “crisis” in theatre’s identity as an art
SPRING 2017 25
form, as other, more popular forms of entertainment encroach, echoes a

broader anxiety in millennial theatre studies (Delgado and Svitch 6).4 Indeed,
Dubatti’s suggestion that theatre has been “overcome” by the Real points to
an urgency to redress the imbalance. He articulates this by reasserting the
aura of theatrical presence, or “convivio”: “sin convivio—reunión de dos
o más hombres [o mujeres], encuentro de presencias en una encrucijada
espacio-temporal cotidiano—no hay teatro” (Filosofía I 43). It is the spatial
continuity that exists between both performance and spectator and between
spectators within the same audience that, he suggests, is not only specific to
theatre, but is also socio-politically symbolic.
This idea(l) of theatre’s auratic conviviality must, however, be nuanced
by taking into account approaches to spectatorship: on the one hand, sharp
criticism of the inertia that characterizes theatre audiences reduced to passive
onlookers (Rancière, Politics 272); on the other, the various strategies de-
vised by the likes of Bertold Brecht and Antonin Artaud to engage spectators
critically across the auditorium’s fourth wall. Theatrical presence is, then,
not enough to ensure political engagement, a point that Rancière makes em-
phatically in The Emancipated Spectator and to which I will return.
In practice, the biodrama series originally created by theatre director
Vivi Tellas—counting some 26 productions to date—has engaged active-
ly with theatre’s relationship to this broader concept of theatricality since
2002.5 The term “biodrama” encapsulates the idea of dramatizing real lives,
as it fuses documentary/life (bio) with fiction (drama), its (bio)politics of
resistance located in the productive interval between these two elements. As
Tellas argues, biodrama’s stance is clear in privileging theatre’s position as
a medium for exploring, drawing on and ultimately contesting this broader
conceptualisation of theatricality:
El Proyecto Biodrama se inscribe en lo que se podría llamar el “re-
torno de lo real” en el campo de la representación. Después de casi
dos décadas de simulaciones y simulacros, lo que vuelve —en parte
como oposición, en parte como reverso— es la idea de que todavía
hay experiencia y de que el arte debe inventar alguna forma nueva
de entrar en relación con ella. (qtd. in Moreno)6
Tellas marks out a clear opposition between experience (as vitally embodied)
and simulation. Like Dubatti, she also emphasizes the need for innovation in
theatrical forms to reengage with the reality of the moment. It is important,
then, to locate this conceptualisation of the biodrama series within its context:
the disastrous aftermath of the acute economic, political, and social debacle
of December 2001.7 Tellas clearly positions her concept in resistance to the

simulacrum of affluence that characterised the accelerated neoliberal structural
changes of President Carlos Menem’s mandate (1989-1999), while challeng-
ing its aggressive individualism and the premise that lives, like commodities,
were disposable in a society in which relations were shaped by the market
and its consumer logic of programmed obsolescence.8 Biodrama hence uses
theatre to explore the possibilities of rebuilding a sense of community (read:
“convivio”) in what was, at the time of its inception, a severely debilitated
post-crisis social fabric.
Such issues find resonance in the work of Mariano Pensotti (Buenos
Aires, 1974), one of Argentina’s most bold and innovative contemporary
theatre practitioners and the focus of this article.9 Alongside Beatriz Catani,
Pensotti co-created one of the earlier biodramas, titled Los 8 de julio (2002),
notable for its use of a large screen on the back wall of the set that serves as
a window connecting the theatre to the world outside. Documentary footage
of interviews with other people born on July 8, 1958 open and close the per-
formance to create a sense of virtual “convivio,” or what Dubatti calls—not
without reservation—“tecnovivio” (Filosofía del teatro III 126), to reach
beyond the confines of the theatre.
While suggesting that “convivio” and “tecnovivio” can be combined pro-
ductively on stage, Dubatti nevertheless reasserts the importance of theatrical
presence as a kernel of resistance “[h]acia una política de valoración de lo
convivial” (128). “Convivio y tecnovivio proponen paradigmas existencial-
es muy diferentes,” he argues. “Cada tecnología determina cambios en las
condiciones del vivir juntos” (126-7). It is these changes that contemporary
independent theatre practitioners explore, with rather less anxiety, as already
integral to everyday life. This is important in marking Pensotti’s use (rather
than rejection) of hybrid theatrical/audiovisual forms as part and parcel of
this drive to reengage theatre with its context and the world outside.
In a recent interview, Pensotti located Cineastas within the concept of
documentary theatre established by Tellas’s series, while questioning what
direction Argentine theatre should take after biodrama: “Desde lo artístico
quiero pensar la posibilidad de la ficción después del biodrama o del teatro
postdramático,” he explains, pointing to the importance of biodrama in de-
fining independent theatre in millennial Buenos Aires, while also suggesting
the need to evolve beyond its initial artistic proposition and context (qtd. in
Irazábal). This, I will argue, involves looking beyond theatrical presence as a
vehicle to recover the Real to instead interrogate how cinema has transformed
SPRING 2017 27
the way in which human subjects perceive live events, along with the possible
horizons for imagining time and space.
Pensotti seems less interested in shoring up theatre’s specificity as a genre,
that is separating it from social theatricality, than exploring the possibility
of hybrid productions that are better equipped to explore the way in which
contemporary worlds are made by a constant dialectic between virtual and
organic spaces. What I will try to demonstrate in this piece is that Pensotti
explores how virtual spaces, and the global referents that they invoke, play
an important—if disjunctive—role in informing local imaginaries. He con-
fronts the role of cinematic affect in shaping the subjective cartographies
that city dwellers map and remap out performatively on a daily basis. This
is, of course, not without a critique of the problems posed by the cultural
frontiers implied in transnational circuits of spectatorship, with particular
reference to the way in which spectacles of poverty, political upheaval, and
the “exotic” cultures of Latin America are marketed for European audiences
seeking catharsis and comfort from the fact that misery happens elsewhere.
His works nevertheless seem to demonstrate a genuine fascination with the
way in which individuals conduct their everyday lives as if living inside their
own personal film, inspired by the affect produced when watching other films,
often set in radically different contexts: identities negotiated both remotely
and cinematically. This paper aims to work through these issues by looking
primarily at the performance piece Cineastas (2013).10
This Is Not a Chair: A Reading of Cineastas

As the lights go up at the beginning of Cineastas, the audience is pre-
sented with a two-tiered installation composed of a pair of identically sized
container-like cubicles located one directly on top of the other.11 The spectator
is then confronted with a fairly mundane brown chair on the lower level of the
onstage installation, while a painted image of what ostensibly appears to be
the same chair stands directly above it on the upper tier. The juxtaposition of
the two chairs would seem to invite a Platonic questioning of their respective
“chairness.”12 It might also be read as a citation of Belgian surrealist painter
René Magritte’s iconic positing of the pipe, versus its “treacherous” painted
reproduction.13 The emptying, vacuum-like sound effect that accompanies
this opening vignette, along with the narrowly focused spotlighting on both
objects, encourages their abstraction into a framing dialectic for the ensuing
performance: the object- and image-laden lower level of the stage is (in this
first instance at least) signified as the space of the Real (or the Real as repre-
sented theatrically), while the spartan upper level denotes its representation, in
this case taking the form of a simulated cinematic space. Much like Magritte’s
challenge to the authority of language and pictorial representation—indeed,
his allusion to the duplicitous nature of “reality” itself—Cineastas uses its
daring fusion of theatre, cinema, and installation art to progressively unlock
a similar multiplication of “intentional ambiguities” (Foucault 15) across this
establishing axiom to the performance. Like Magritte, Pensotti challenges the
spectator to think about what she or he sees (and consequently understands)
when looking into what can be best described as a life-size television set. Strik-
ingly similar to the glass-fronted cubicles inhabited by the automated citizens
of filmmaker Jacques Tati’s Paris “of spectacle”14—much to the amusement
of passers-by mesmerized by the live show in a precursor to reality TV taken
to its literal, yet remarkably banal, extreme—the set seems to suggest a clear
metaphor for a society living, as Argentine sociologist Beatriz Sarlo puts it,
“en estado de television,” albeit—I shall argue quite significantly—stripped
of its giant screens (85).15
Cineastas is a coproduction of the government-run Complejo Teatral de
Buenos Aires, several international theatre festivals, and Pensotti’s Grupo
Marea (founded in 2005), which he co-leads with scenographer-cum-instal-
Photo: Bea Bogers

SPRING 2017 29
lation artist Mariana Tirantte. The pair are seasoned collaborators and Tirantte
is the architect of the set for Cineastas, which very much takes on the role of
the protagonist in the conceptualization the spectacle (Irazábal). The perfor-
mance was premiered at the Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussels, Belgium,
in 2013, followed by its domestic premiere at the Teatro Sarmiento later that
year. It has since enjoyed a highly successful run both at home and on the
international festival circuit and is Pensotti’s most widely circulated work to
date. It continues to draw the attention of international festival programmers.16
Best defined as a cinematic drama that innovatively places filmic
technique at the service of theatre, the performance recounts the lives of
four porteño17 filmmakers as they each work on the production of their re-
spective films over the period of a year. The lives of Gabriel, Mariela, Nadia,
and Lucas18 unfold on the lower level of the stage, while the split-screen effect
created by the separate spaces of the installation enables their films to be
played out simultaneously above them, the action in many ways constituting
a sublimation of the lives (the film’s unconscious, perhaps) happening below.
In a tripartite structure of meaning, the performance also explores how this
autobiographical tie between auteur and film is symptomatic of context. In this
sense, Cineastas engages with the biographical spirit of biodrama, creating
a narrative of individuals’ lives in relation to major public events happening
concurrently: history recounted from the intimate space of biography. The
simultaneous layers of the performance might even be read as a reflexive
staging of the very process of turning someone’s (auto)biography into a per-
formance.19 “Hablo de sujetos que tienen mi edad,” states Pensotti, “y que
han vivido lo que yo he vivido, en términos sociales y políticos,” reiterating
biography’s location at the interface between the private and the collective,
while also inserting his own narrative into the fold (qtd. in Irazábal). Together,
this complex, multi-layered and multi-stranded mesh of performative threads
maps out the subjective fabric of contemporary Buenos Aires: the performance
of a “hypercity” (Presner, Shepard, and Kawano 11-14), as refracted through
a kaleidoscope of individual lenses belonging to a generation—Pensotti’s
own—of young thirty and forty-something Argentineans who have grown
up under the dictatorship and its neoliberal aftermath and whose lives have
been molded by their consequences.
I chose the opening epigraph to this piece—cited from North American
artist Dorothea Tanning’s autobiography and account of her life alongside
Dadaist pioneer Max Ernst—because it seemed, if not to solve, at least to
capture the conundrums I perceived while trying to settle upon an approach
to Pensotti’s richly intertextual and intermedial performance. For, the be-

ginning is also an impossible place in Cineastas. The layers of fiction and
reality stack up as this theatrical map of cinematic Buenos Aires is acted out,
ephemerally imprinted on the set’s blank, whitewashed canvas. Indeed, the
key to its production of meaning lies in its aesthetics of intrusion, confusion,
and multiplicity, in deciphering a sense of the city as a whole that can only
be understood as the hypothetical sum of its many disparate parts (never
visible to the human eye integrally as a whole), or, as the voiceover narrator
suggests, a collage of more than 2,500 cinematic iterations of the city since
Buenos Aires first became a film set in 1905, not only representing itself, but
also providing the mise-en-scène for a host of other global cities (as Mariela
states at one point).20
On a thematic level, as the title unequivocally suggests, Cineastas is
about authorship; it explores how the individual biography of each auteur
finds expression in the film that s/he is in the process of making. Pensotti
describes how the project for Cineastas began by interviewing filmmakers
and, indeed, the story commences by re-enacting this initial stage in the cre-
ative process, as commercially successful filmmaker Gabriel is interviewed
by a film critic.21 The interview is, however, rather banal and a parody of
the value of such an exercise. The spectator gleans very little about the film
from the director’s responses, save perhaps Gabriel’s affirmation about the
importance of the city in shaping what he does: “[B]ueno, la verdad es que
estoy muy sorprendido. Me estoy dando cuenta de cómo la ciudad influye en
lo que hacemos. Para mí, eso es algo totalmente nuevo” (Cineastas 00:02:06
mins). Significantly, this is the response to the very first question the critic
asks, establishing a second frame of reference for the ensuing performance:
the importance of Buenos Aires as both mise-en-scène and protagonist. Shortly
afterwards, Gabriel is shown potential props for his film and is presented with
an umbrella. In yet another reference to Magritte,22 the clouds imprinted on
the umbrella replicate the painter’s signature cloud-filled skies, often deemed
to signify the unconscious. The relationship between auteur and film therefore
seems sealed, the space of the Real nestled beneath the space of the film, a
biographical thread holding the two together.
Yet it is also through the figure of Gabriel that Pensotti stages the (quite
literal) “death of the Author”23—or Auteur, as is the case here—when he finds
out that he is terminally ill and has little time left to live. Facing his own
obsolescence—an important recurring theme in Cineastas, whether profes-
sional, artistic, romantic, or commercial—Gabriel desperately tries to use his
SPRING 2017 31
film to put off death by creating a video record of his life for posterity. This
attempt turns into nothing more than a frustrated desire that ends in a rather
pathetic recording of the objects in his possession—that is, literally in his own
reification—as his changes to the screenplay are met with bewilderment by
the other members of the film production team and are ultimately rejected for
seeming rather odd.24 “Cómo me gustaría ser un gorilita mecánico fabricado
en China al que nunca se le acaban las pilas,” he thinks somewhat desper-
ately—his thoughts communicated by a voiceover narrative delivered by the
actress who will then play his wife—as his impending mortality leads him
to fantasize about his own spectral existence as a mechanical reproduction.
Cinema, the voiceover states, presents the utopian “posibilidad de fijar el
tiempo,” but this utopian ideal ends merely in Gabriel’s lamentation that he
is nothing more than “una obra maestra de la simulación.”
With the death of the Auteur comes the birth of the Spectator, if this is to
be read as a variation on Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author”
(1967), which positions the reader, rather than the author, as the locus of
the production of meaning. The opening vignette clearly aims to draw the
audience’s attention to its condition as spectator. I would argue, therefore,
that Cineastas is more about spectatorship than it is about authorship, or at
the very least that the two processes conflate. It is also worth pointing to the
significance of the polyphonic, anti-Authoritarian stance that Barthes’ essay
puts forward within the memory politics of the post-dictatorship context, an
issue that is dealt with explicitly in Nadia’s storyline and implicitly in that of
Lucas. What I would like to argue here is that, although this opening scene
is configured as something of a reverse Platonic cave, Pensotti by no means
positions the audience under the illusion of the spectacle.25 Instead, he invites
them backstage. Neither does he advocate the urgency for their emancipa-
tion from “the spectacle,” as Rancière might. “Spectatorship is a bad thing.
Being a spectator means looking at a spectacle,” Rancière states, the term
“spectacle” to be read in the Debordian sense—the action of looking entirely
passively and devoid of agency. “Theater,” he continues, “is the transmission
of the ignorance that makes people ill through the medium of ignorance that
is optical illusion” (Spectator 272). Rancière’s echoes of postmodern angst at
the noxious effects of the spectacle seem not to entirely fit within the contem-
porary technological landscape. Positioning the audience in front of this giant
TV-like installation is indeed a reference to our reliance on screens to mediate
experience and intersubjective relationships, but I would argue that Pensotti
encourages the spectator to consider—rather than reject—the role that film
spectatorship has in authoring our daily trajectories through the city. Society
is arguably no longer interested in casting off the spectacle—so integral is
it to everyday life that the presence of screens might almost be considered
organic—but there is an urgency to explore how individuals perceive and
make sense of their surroundings cinematically.
Affective Cartographies of the Cinematic Self

The home page to Pensotti’s personal website is covered by a background
image of Argentine plastic artist Jorge Macchi’s installation Guía de la in-
movilidad (2003).26 Macchi’s guidebook imitates the classic A-Z-style map
booklet of Buenos Aires readily available in kiosks, but eschews the purpose
of this traditional cartographers plan of the city, which is to provide a precise,
to-scale representation of the physical contours of the cityscape, complete
with information as to how best to navigate a route through its arteries and
transit through the urban landscape. Instead, Macchi cuts away the city’s
flesh—its buildings, infrastructure, and public spaces—leaving only the
roads and avenues exposed. As he reduces the city to nothing more than its
conduits, one might expect a piece rather more along the lines of una guía
de la hipermovilidad—a city reduced to flows—but by layering sections of
the city on top of one another, he creates a disjunctive, layered mesh of street
names that are misaligned in a way that breaks the spatial continuity of the
map and prevents movement around the city.
The palimpsestic character of Macchi’s guidebook also evokes the pos-
sibility of multiple time frames. Cineastas in many ways echoes this idea
by creating its own performative map of the city of Buenos Aires, using a
similar technique of layering, only this time of subjective maps that overlap
but never collide. There is little in the onstage installation—save the sullied
whitewash on the walls, which might remind some of suburban Buenos Aires
and its sidewalls27—to evoke the Argentine capital, but a similar mesh of
subjective cartographies is built up as the performance unfolds. It is worth
noting here that Pensotti and Tirantte work hard to inject a sense of mobility
into their mise-en-scène. Recent productions have used a revolving set (El
pasado es un animal grotesco), two treadmill-style mats moving in opposite
directions across the stage (Cuando vuelva a casa voy a ser otro), and dy-
namic movement between spaces on the part of the actors and actresses, as
is the case in Cineastas. Also noteworthy is the fact that theatre and cinema
are often differentiated on account of theatre’s stasis versus cinema’s inherent
mobility (Sontag 362). In his edited volume on cinema and the city, for ex-
SPRING 2017 33
ample, Mark Shiel refers to the “telling correlation between the mobility and
visual and aural sensations of the city and the mobility and visual and aural
sensations of the cinema” (1). Pensotti and Tirantte’s dynamic and highly
cinematic mise-en-scène clearly works to obviate this distinction between
theatre’s stasis and cinema’s mobility.
Many contemporary films that attempt to represent concurrent spaces
within a city, or global connectivity, such as Alejandro González Iñárritu’s
Amores perros (Mexico, 2001) and Babel (USA, Mexico, France, 2006) or
Paul Haggis’s Crash (USA, 2005), use a modular, or thread structure to por-
tray different storylines simultaneously, as well as the contingency governing
urban interaction. The way in which such narratives are often recounted
anachronically has also drawn observations that they are memory narratives,
collapsing causal chains of logic aligned with linear time by filtering the past
through the lens of the present via analepses and prolepses in the narrative
(Cameron 79-112). The thread structure gives the play a synchronous qual-
ity that allows neighbourhoods as disparate as the affluent Puerto Madero
and the marginal Villa Lugano to be performed within the same restricted
physical space, much like Macchi’s cartographic manipulation of the city-
scape. Pensotti profits from the intrinsic spatiality of the three media/genres
that he fuses in Cineastas—cinema, theatre, and installation art—to create a
performative map of the city.
Each character hails from a different part of the city and different walk of
life. Likewise, each is involved in a very different kind of filmmaking, from
Gabriel’s commercially driven Hollywood coproduction featuring interna-
tional stars to Mariela’s independent documentary to Lucas’s low-budget,
criminally self-funded fiction film, in which he denounces the very existence
he lives and, rather ironically, in which he becomes increasingly embroiled.
As the films that each character is making unfold in parallel with their lives
underneath, the performance maps out a generation.
This generation is characterized by several recurrent tropes. The figure
of Nadia, for example, represents the H.I.J.O.S—children of the 1976-83
military dictatorship’s estimated 30,000 disappeared—as she is commissioned
by a film company in Paris to make a film in which one of the disappeared,
Carlos, returns from hiding and is reunited with his family. The process
causes Nadia intense malaise, as she begins to question both the ethics and
politics of making a film that might suggest that the disappeared are still alive
and waiting to return, effectively negating recognition of the military junta’s
crimes against humanity on a massive scale. Hence, she starts to imagine that
her own disappeared father might still be alive, triggering a series of hazy
and fragmented childhood memories.
This storyline problematizes the task of representing forced disappear-
ance, while also evoking the important role of the H.I.J.O.S and both theatre
and cinema as spaces for building a cultural memory from the intimate space
of the parent-child relationship. It also explores the transnational nature of
film production, whereby Nadia is forced to film a screenplay (suffering
writer’s block, she fails to write her own) that has been imposed on her from
France, without the writer ever having set foot in Argentina. Nadia is the only
member of cast or crew perturbed by this, which seems to problematize the
“transnational marketing of memory in a new global imaginary” for interna-
tional audiences, a debate that has been raised by Silvia Tandeciarz (63) in
relation to Juan José Campanella’s highly successful and Oscar-winning El
secreto de los ojos (2009). To this, one might add Pablo Trapero’s recent box
office hit on the domestic market, El clan (2015), which portrays the crimes
of extortion-for-profit brutally committed under the official banner of the
dictatorship, the case of the Puccio family curiously capturing the nation’s
imagination both as a successful film and a prime-time television series in
the same year (“‘El Clan Puccio’”). Both films deal with a memory of the
dictatorship, albeit obliquely, by characterising the era from the perspective
of a broader societal violence, beyond politically defined categories of vic-
timhood and repression.28
Lucas’s film draws a clear parallel between violence, human rights viola-
tions, and the implementation of the neoliberal economic structure, echoing
the role of the military dictatorship in instigating the neoliberal turn. In 2004,
a stencil on the walls of the Avenida de Mayo29 read: “Los desaparecidos
de ayer son los excluidos de hoy,” a graphic version of Eduardo Galeano’s
statement, “[p]eople were tortured so prices could be free,” (qtd. in Idelber
Avelar 231) or Latin America’s “cruel modernity,” as Jean Franco articulates
the relationship between dictatorship and its violent embedding of the neolib-
eral logic that resulted in increasing social divides. As Mariela’s documentary
charts the musicals echoing the collapse of the Soviet Union and, by associ-
ation, the demise of the Left and “post-ideological” world (Bell) (or rather
a world increasingly dominated by a single market logic), Lucas stages this
forceful embedding of the neoliberal ideology. The protagonist of his film
is kidnapped, held captive, and tortured. He is made to dress up as Ronald
McDonald and force-fed cold hamburgers as punishment for an unspecified
“crime.” With time, he becomes so used to dressing up as Ronald McDonald
SPRING 2017 35
and captivity becomes such a “normal” part of his daily routine that when
his kidnappers suddenly disappear, leaving the door to his prison cell open,
he dares not venture out and take advantage of his freedom.
This metaphor finds an echo in Lucas’s own unintentional ascent up the
management hierarchy of his McDonald’s branch, which eventually ends in
him adopting the corporate values of the multinational employer that had
previously so repulsed him. The culmination of his ascent is portrayed ab-
surdly when Barack Obama visits his branch, and he is photographed for the
local newspaper posing side-by-side with the US president. Meanwhile, his
rebellion is reduced to creating a new “meal deal,” named the “McCombo
Rebelde.” Again, the theme of obsolescence re-emerges in this storyline,
this time professional. When Lucas is injured defending his branch from
anti-capitalist protesters, he is forced to take sick leave to recover. By the
time he is well enough to work again, he has been replaced, mercilessly cast
off for someone who is more productive.30 The theme of obsolescence in
romantic relationships is played out in Gabriel’s film, as protagonist Tony is
abandoned by his girlfriend. As he sets out to find her, he encounters a string
of abandoned lovers, victims of what Zygmunt Bauman might term “liquid
love” (9, 13). Within his broader conceptualization of modernity, Bauman
develops the idea of a society in which human relationships are consumed,
the romantic bonds that unite one person to another born with an expiration
date already stamped upon them. Tony is also terminally ill like Gabriel and
the scenes in which both consult a doctor are the only scenes in which both
the gestures and dialogue replicate one another simultaneously on both levels
of the stage.
As the performance unfolds, the lower level is subtly emptied of objects
by a stagehand, turning the lower level of Tirantte’s set design into what
seems, by optical illusion, to become a reflection of the space above. The
ground quite literally becomes disembedded to separate the two spaces; re-
ality and fiction are hence inverted. The only sign to proliferate—for a while
at least—on the lower tier is the unmistakeable golden ‘M’ of McDonald’s,
carrying the full symbolic weight of the neoliberal ideology in its corporate,
globalized expression.
Other techniques contribute to the effect of the two spaces bleeding into
one another. By the time Lucas is introduced on the lower level, his storyline
is accompanied by an extra-diegetic soundtrack, a technique associated more
with fictional films and documentaries. In the early stages of the performance,
the front lighting on the upper level, creating shadows on the back wall of the
set (again, Plato’s cave springs to mind), contrasts with the more uniform,
blanket lighting on the lower level. Likewise, the use of coloured lighting
on the upper level, reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s Le mépris (1963), is
eventually replicated on the lower level as fiction invades the real. Cineastas
certainly performs the emptying out of the real, but instead of lamenting this
loss of the real with a narrative advocating its recovery, I would suggest that
Pensotti encourages further questioning of the way in which contemporary
worlds are made via our own cinematic lens.
Being Through Cinema

Cineastas can thus be said to explore the notion of being through cinema.
The idea that film spectatorship is intrinsic to the way in which we author
our daily lives and identities is a recurring theme in Pensotti’s recent work.
“Tener dos vidas es más equilibrada que tener una sola,” reflects the omnis-
cient voice-over narrator in Cineastas, suggesting that Pensotti embraces the
possibilities of hybrid experience and the multiple identities this may bear. In
Enciclopedia de vidas no vividas (2010), Pensotti explores the possibility of
bifurcating lives by asking volunteers to imagine an alternative life through
cinema. The performance compiles thirty separate anecdotes authored by
writers, playwrights, and theorists from various places, all of whom describe
Photo: Bea Bogers

SPRING 2017 37
hypothetical situations they would have liked to have lived, but did not, in
person at least. In relation to this project, Pensotti comments:
¿Cuáles son los momentos que hubiéramos deseado vivir y no vivi-
mos? ¿Cuáles son las canciones que deberían haber acompañado esos
momentos que no vivimos? ¿Cómo ordenar las vidas que podríamos
haber tenido y no tuvimos? Nuestras vidas son películas. No podemos
vivir ninguna situación sin sentir una cámara invisible sobre nosotros,
sin vernos inevitablemente reflejados en el recuerdo de actores que
hemos visto actuando escenas similares. Y, sobretodo, casi podemos
escuchar la música de fondo a las escenas cotidianas que vivimos.31
He suggests that we spend so much time in front of screens watching the
lives of others (whether fictional or not), that we can only imagine our own
lives as if they were being filmed, complete with a soundtrack.
In this sense, we are all directors of our own personal life films, an idea
Pensotti develops more explicitly in his short contribution to the literary
collection Buenos Aires: Escala 1:1. Los barrios por sus escritores. As the
title suggests, the anthology creates a collectively authored map of the city
of Buenos Aires. Each chapter is written by a different author about one of
Buenos Aires’s many neighbourhoods. It is another variation on the idea of
a kaleidoscope of voices piecing together a cultural map of the city, as de-
veloped in Cineastas and evoked in Macchi’s urban installations. Pensotti’s
contribution to this anthology is a short text on the Parque Patricios neigh-
bourhood of Capital Federal titled “Parque Patricios / Autocine,” a play on
words between the drive-through cinema and a kind of “auto (or self-directed)
cinema” (77-82). The first-person narrator of this short piece recounts the
disappearance of his parents during the dictatorship, who fail to pick him up
from school one evening. Knowing full well that it is not safe to return home,
he seeks refuge in various places around the neighbourhood. The text uses a
dual structure, similar to that created by the separate performance spaces in
Cineastas, by using block, capital typescript to signify the space of the film.
As the narrative recounting the aftermath of the disappearance of his parents
unfolds, it periodically cuts to seemingly unconnected short descriptions of
Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas (1984). One might question what rural Texas
has in common with suburban Buenos Aires—the intruding fragments seem
to be somewhat divorced contextually from the narrator’s reality—but the
narrator is clearly fascinated by this film and has created his own dialectic
between the film and his reality through the common theme of the abandoned
child, a recurring theme in Wenders’s work.32 Seeing his own reality through
the rose-tinged lens provided by Paris, Texas makes his life more palatable:
En la película pasa cada cosa que me pasó hasta ese momento. Pero
todo es más chistoso, con más brillo, yo soy más ingenioso y las cosas
me salen mejor. […] y yo parezco más lindo, más profunda y sabia
mi mirada. Mi película no la ve nadie, claro, pero no hace falta, yo
me la proyecto en la cabeza todos los días y a partir de ahí vivo un
poco mejor. (181-82)
Another important point to note is that Wenders’ film uses the trope of the
screen to mediate the interactions between the broken family portrayed in
the film. Several of the encounters only ever take place through a window,
which acts as a screen (both real and symbolic) punctuating each meeting.
This reference is, however, less explicit than the fact that the narrator imagines
his own surroundings via the films he has watched.
I would suggest, then, that Pensotti belongs to a young generation of
artists—many of whom are discussed in this issue—who look beyond the
established categories of the postmodern to explore virtual/organic hybrid
identities more openly. In ¿Cómo viajar sin ver?, for example, Spanish-Ar-
gentine writer Andrés Neuman makes an important observation about our rela-
tionship to virtual worlds as he makes his whistle-stop tour of Latin America:
Vivimos siempre en varios lugares al mismo tiempo. No importa
dónde estés, podemos consultar nuestro correo, leer los periódicos del
mundo, seguir la actualidad internacional. Vayamos donde vayamos,
continuamos dentro de un mismo paisaje: el de las comunicaciones.
Por eso me pareció atractivo intentar un diario que reflejase dos
certezas contrarias. La de que, a través de los medios, solemos pasar
más tiempo en otra parte (o en varias partes a la vez, o en ninguna
parte) que donde nos hallamos físicamente. (15)
Several of Neuman’s works explore the role of virtual platforms in mediating
human relations. He states that he openly acknowledges their integral role
in everyday life and shaping contemporary intersubjectivities, rather than
seeing them as a threat.
Cineastas posits a Cortazarian enigma wherein the relationship between
reality and fiction is indecipherable: Reality does not precede fiction, and
neither can fiction entirely precede reality. Just like the matryoshka dolls
that Mariela collects as part of her documentary project on Russian musicals
charting the Glasnost period, the threads of Cineastas exist inside one anoth-
er like Moebius strips. The same actor or actress may take on several roles
SPRING 2017 39
within the same storyline, their transitions often seamless, at times at a speed
that defies belief and with minimal or no costume change. This evokes the
idea of multiple and interchangeable identities. The constant displacement
of the real onto a prefiguring fiction creates the effect of a mise-en-abîme
ad infinitum.33 “No vemos ciudades,” advises the voice-over narrator at one
point, “vemos ficciones de ciudades.” This point is important enough to be
repeated for emphasis: “No vemos ciudades, vemos ficciones.” The point of
origin—of the city, of its population, of a work of art—is presented thus as
impossible: “Todo lo que vemos está condicionado por lo que vimos ante-
riormente,” states the narrator in a rehashed version of the quotation from
Godard printed in the performance programme. Mariela’s documentary on
Russian musicals is part of her own personal search for her (adopted) roots,
a journey that leads her rather absurdly into a televised simulacrum of her
adopted family’s town of origin on the Russian steppes, as if she suddenly
finds herself inside something akin to her own Truman Show.34 The only
plausible origin presented in this performance is arguably cinema itself. Or,
I would argue, perhaps theatre as the medium able to evoke cinema’s origin,
to strip cinema of its screens and reflect upon its role in authoring everyday
lives and shaping the way in which we perceive the material world around
us. This brings me to the final issue at stake in this study: the nature of the
relationship between theatre and cinema within the performance of Cineastas.
Hybrid Identities
It is hard to discern whether Cineastas uses theatre to undress the filmic
process, or whether film is used in order to revitalize theatre. The critical vo-
cabulary used to analyse a film is certainly the most appropriate for analysing
the performance’s style and montage. Yet, for a performance that purports to
explore cinema’s role in both shaping the way in which humans now perceive
their surroundings and cultivating local imaginaries, there is a curious lack of
screens in Cineastas. The relationship between theatre and cinema has more
often than not been theorised in terms of one’s attempt to differentiate itself
as an art form from the other, an issue that Susan Sontag has considered in
depth. “The history of cinema is often treated as the history of its emancipa
tion from theatrical models,” she argues, citing its liberation
from theatrical ‘frontality’ (the unmoving camera reproducing the
situation of the spectator of a play fixed in his seat), then from theat-
rical acting (gestures needlessly stylized, exaggerated—needlessly,
because now the actor could be seen ‘close-up’), then from theatrical
furnishings (unnecessary ‘distancing’ of the audiences’ emotions,

disregarding the opportunity to immerse the audience in reality). (362)
Sontag’s discussion of the relationship between theatre and film is, in this
sense, very similar to Dubatti’s assertion that theatre’s specificity as a genre
lies in its presence, or “convivio:” “If an irreducible distinction between
theatre and cinema does exist, it may be this,” she continues.
Theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space. Cinema
(through editing, that is, through the change of shot—which is the
basic unit of film construction) has access to an alogical or discontinu-
ous use of space. In the theatre, people are either in the stage space or
‘off’. When ‘on’, they are always visible or visualizable in contiguity
with each other. In the cinema, no such relation is necessarily visible
or even visualizable. (Sontag 362-367, original emphasis)
Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, for example, applauded cinema’s ca-
pacity to move out of the theatre and into the factories and onto the streets
(Mariela’s Russian lover, Dmitri, cites him during one of their conversations).
Pensotti’s work does, however, seem to shun these established assumptions
about what is specific to film and theatre, fusing these two performance
types together. There is arguably no point in trying to create a hierarchy
of importance between these two genres in Cineastas. When Dmitri talks
about Eisenstein with Mariela, he provides a clue as to how the relationship
between the two spaces in the performance are to be read. He cites Soviet
montage theory, outlined in Eistenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigori
Alexandrov’s co-signed “A Statement” from 1928. Soviet montage theory
saw editing as the key to cinematic language, the production of meaning—a
third meaning—taking place in the dialectic created between two juxtaposed
shots. This seems to suggest that identities are produced in a kind of Lev
Kuleshov effect between our material surroundings and the influence of film
on the way we perceive them. The dialectic between theatre and cinema thus
seems to be the best medium for replicating this organic/virtual dialectic.
To Conclude: Identity as Intermedial?

Cineastas creates a map of a generation, citing many of the tropes one
might expect of the post-dictatorship period in Argentina and, also more gen-
erally, of the postmodern. Few of these references are, however, developed
in any depth, which has led certain critics to suggest that the performance
“lacks flesh.”35 I would, however, argue that the absurd and, at times, seem-
ingly cursory references to these tropes are deliberate. The very colloquial
SPRING 2017 41
nature of the expression adds to the flippancy.36 Instead of the nostalgic

lamenting of the dissipation of the Real and a desire for its return (Žižek
10-11; Baudrillard)—a staple, if now rather tired organising principle of the
postmodern and a founding idea of the biodrama series—Pensotti casts out
existing categories and asks us to consider the more integral role that virtual
spaces, such as cinema, play in making contemporary worlds, inflecting both
our sense of being in and (dis)belonging to a specific place. Neither does
he advocate the need to liberate the spectator from the pernicious effects of
the spectacle (Rancière, “Spectator”). Instead, Pensotti explores the role of
spectatorship in authoring the everyday. The residue of such anxieties indeed
remains, but it is shown to be insufficient for fully grasping the role of virtual
spaces in vectors of identity construction. If there is a message to be read in
the medium, it is that Pensotti’s insightful theatrical-cinematic installation
draws a set of boundaries along which to better understand the role of screen
media in making contemporary worlds. To this I would add the important
role of theatre, as cinema’s precursor in a continuum of performance types,
in stripping these worlds of their screens, exploring “back stage” beneath
the layers of mediation, taking the audience back to the original cinematic
encounter, and encouraging each spectator to reflect on the role of screen
media in the construction of identity.
What, then, of the subjectivities and identities that are crystalized in this
hybrid experience? The performance’s dialectic between the space of the real
and the space of the film, their progressive conflation and interdependence
should, I would argue, be read as a demonstration of the dialectic through
which contemporary identities are negotiated. Cineastas’s hybrid structure
is clearly instrumental in finding a medium suitable for capturing the way to
better understand processes of identity construction. This could be likened
to Sarlo’s argument that the speculative structures of television and what she
terms “la posibilidad estructural del zapping” shape contemporary social
relations (60-1, original emphasis). I, however, prefer to liken Cineastas to
Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’s more playful and accepting account of
his own hyper- or intertextual subjectivity. Borges’s El jardín de los senderos
que se bifurcan (1945) is cited as a seminal point of reference in the New
Media Reader (Manovich 13-16), a hypertext avant la lettre. Shortly before
his death in 1986, Borges captured this idea of an intertextual construction
of identity as a product of incorporated fictions: “No estoy seguro de que yo
exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leído, toda la gente que he
conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado. Todas las ciudades que he visi-
tado” (qtd. in Fermosel). Cineastas offers a contemporary variation on the

same theme: the construction of the cinematic self and his or her hypertextual
identities in the making of contemporary worlds.
Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Notes
1
This may seem like a rehashed version of the old adage “All the world’s a stage,” as cited from
William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, but, as I argue in Politics and Performance (12), the conflation
of aesthetics and politics becomes the object of reflexive interrogation in post-dictatorship Argentine theatre
in the wake of a dictatorship that, as Diana Taylor argues, was characterized by “obvious spectacularity”
(273).
2
Goffman defines social interaction in clearly theatrical terms: “when an individual appears in the
presence of others, there will usually be some reasons for him [or her] to mobilize his [or her] activity so
that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his [or her] interest to convey” (15–16).
3
Schechner clearly defines performance as “an activity done by an individual or group in the
presence of and for another individual or group” (22), explaining the absence of cinema and other virtual
performance types from this continuum. I would argue, however, for an extension of this continuum within
the contemporary context. More than a decade on from Schechner’s work, the integral role of virtual
spaces and identities performed on online platforms in everyday life should be taken into account.
4
Again, reasserting the primacy of presence in the theatrical encounter, María Delgado and Caridad
Svitch’s edited volume, Theatre in Crisis? Performance Manifestos for a New Century: Snapshots of a
Time (2002), considers the challenges facing millennial theatre productions from the perspective of both
theorists and practitioners.
5
The biodrama series began in 2002 at the Teatro Sarmiento, part of the theater complex run by
the Government of the city of Buenos Aires, with Analía Couceyro’s Barrocos retratos de una papa. The
series was conceived by theatre director Vivi Tellas, who not only curates the series, but has directed some
nine out of twenty-six productions. The concept of biodrama, her passion for biography, and her insatiable
interest in exploring theatricality are the key topics in the bite-sized TEDxRíodelaPlata presentation given
by Tellas on December 17, 2013.
6
Óscar Cornago echoes this in his appraisal of biodrama: “En una sociedad desbordada de re-
presentaciones e imágenes, de simulacros y ficciones, la recuperación de lo real ha funcionado como una
especie de consigna en campos muy diversos. [...] Tanto en el arte como en la escena mediática se ha
tratado de crear un efecto de realidad que estuviera más allá de lo ficticio, de lo que no es verdadero, del
engaño y lo teatral” (5).
7
On December 19, 2001, the Argentine people took to the streets under the slogan “Que se vayan
todos,” referring to the political class, in widespread demonstrations against restrictions on the withdrawal
of savings. Argentina ended up defaulting on its foreign debt payment and the peso devalued dramati-
cally, putting an end to the fixed exchange rate. An economic, social, and political crisis ensued that saw
unemployment surge and just shy of half the population was classified officially as being below the poverty
line. Alternative forms of representation and participation proliferated as the country saw five presidents
in the space of only two weeks. See Alejandro Grimson, La cultura en las crisis latinoamericanas, and
Mauricio Rojas, Historia de la crisis argentina.
8
In the introduction to Mariana Obersztern’s biodrama, El aire alrededor (staged in 2003), Tellas
states: “En un mundo descartable, ¿qué valor tienen nuestras vidas, nuestras experiencias, nuestro tiempo?
SPRING 2017 43
Biodrama se propone reflexionar sobre esta cuestión. Se trata de investigar cómo los hechos de la vida
de cada persona—hechos individuales, privados—constituyen la Historia” (46). The Menem mandate
is often referred to as the “fiesta menemista,” a decade of consumerism unleashed, also characterized
by the well-known catchphrase “deme dos” [give me two of everything], evoking its excess. The recent
election of President Mauricio Macri, who took office in December 2015 to follow Cristina Fernández de
Kirchner’s mandate, has revived fears of a return to the unchecked neoliberalism of the 1990s (“Primeros
pasos”). It has yet to be seen as to how independent theatre will react to this. The new regime already
represents a threat to artistic spaces in the city of Buenos Aires (“Aumento de luz”), continuing with a
policy that had already threatened to extinguish many independent cultural spaces under his mandate as
president of the City of Buenos Aires (“Ola de clausuras”).
9
For more information on Mariano Pensotti: http://marianopensotti.com/.
10
I would like to thank both Jordana Blejmar and Cecilia Sosa for recommending this production
and suggesting that it would fit in with my research area. The field trip to Buenos Aires that enabled
me to attend live performances of Cineastas at the Teatro Sarmiento in August 2014 was funded by the
Newcastle University Early Career Researcher mobility fund. The remaining fieldwork was funded by the
EU Marie Curie RISE researcher mobility project “Cultural Narratives of Crisis and Renewal (CRIC)”
(2015-2018), which enabled me to be a visiting researcher at the Universidad Tres de Febrero in Buenos
Aires in August and September 2015.
11
The set design and construction is the fruit of another successful collaboration between Mariano
Pensotti and scenographer-cum-installation artist Mariana Tirantte. Co-founders of the Grupo Marea,
they have worked together on several performances: El pasado es un animal grotesco (2010), Hoy es el
día (2014), El paraíso (2014), and, most recently, Cuando vuelva a casa voy a ser otro (2015).
12
I refer here to Plato’s theory of archetypes.
13
“Ceci n’est pas une pipe” [This is not a pipe] is the legend written onto the canvas of Magritte’s
painting La trahison des images [The Treachery of Images] (1929). This is certainly no coincidence,
given that Cineastas was first presented at the Kunsten Festival des Arts in Belgium; the citation of one of
Belgium’s most famous painters would have taken on added significance as a wink to the local audience.
14
“Spectacle” in the Situationist sense, particularly the set of definitions provided in Guy Debord’s
work The Society of Spectacle (1967). In such a society, argues Debord, “[e]verything that was directly
lived has receded into a representation. […] When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere
images become real beings” (7). This concept of the spectacle as configuring social relations is the found-
ing notion on which Rancière’s call to “emancipate” the spectator is based (Spectator 271-80).
15
I am referring here to French filmmaker Jacques Tati’s film Playtime (1967). Tati built a huge set
to recreate Paris quite literally as a city of spectacle, as the Situationist International might have defined
it. Its date of release coincided with the publication of Guy Debord’s book The Society of Spectacle (the
eponymous film, directed by Debord, was released in 1973). In Tati’s Paris, the only recognizable image
of Paris is a brief reflection of the iconic Eiffel Tower on the surface of a freshly polished window. The
rest of the city is designed in monotonous grey according to geometric norms, to facilitate the steady,
uninterrupted flow of traffic, people, and capital as businesses market their gadgets to eager consumers.
The trope of the screen is vital to Tati’s rendition of Paris, just as it is—albeit in its notable absence—in
Pensotti’s performance. The fact that M. Hulot cannot discern where there is glass and where there is not
indicates that society is largely oblivious to the role of screens in mediating social interaction.
16
As this article went to press, Cineastas was being presented at the New Zealand International Arts
Festival, having been staged at festivals across Europe and United States, along with successful repeat
seasons in Buenos Aires.
17
Porteño is the local term in Spanish for someone who originates from or lives in the city of
Buenos Aires.
18
Played by Javier Lorenzo, Valeria Lois, Juliana Muras, and Marcelo Subiotto, respectively. The
fifth member of the cast is Horacio Acosta, who takes on various roles within the storylines centrered on
the four filmmakers. The only other onstage presence is that of a rather active and slick stagehand, who
plays an important role in discretely removing all props from the initially laden lower level of the set as
the performance unfolds.
19
It is important to note that the biodrama series experiments liberally with the unstable frontier
between reality and fiction. It is not a series that follows any aesthetic model and each individual bio-
drama offers a very different approach to Tellas’s unifying concept. For more on the biodrama series, see
Óscar Cornago, “Biodrama: sobre el teatro de la vida y la vida del teatro,” and my previous study of the
following biodramas in Politics and Performance (127-60): Los 8 de julio (Beatriz Catani and Mariano
Pensotti, 2002), Temperley (Luciando Suardi and Alejandro Tantanian, 2002), and El aire alrededor
(Mariana Obersztern, 2003).
20
The voice-over narrator cites the first film set in Buenos Aires as having been made in 1905.
However, it is unclear to which film Pensotti is referring. The first film is generally cited as being Fe-
derico Figner’s documentary footage of the Avenida de Mayo and Palermo in 1896, the same year that
the Lumière brothers’ films were first screened in the Argentine capital.
21
It is important to note here that Pensotti’s performances often stem from some kind of docu-
mentary technique, whether in the form of interviews (Cineastas, Los 8 de julio), collated fragments of
photographs cast out at the local developing lab (El pasado es un animal grotesco), collected anecdotes
(Enciclopedia de vidas no vividas), or personal belongings (Cuando vuelva a casa voy a ser otro).
22
This design of umbrella is commonly found in souvenir shops of contemporary art museums
housing Magritte’s work in their collection. Many of Magritte’s works have a signature cloud-swept
background.
23
If, as Barthes argues, “the true locus of writing is reading,” then we might extrapolate this argu-
ment and suggest that the true locus of performance lies with the spectator rather than the author: “a text
is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue,
parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader,
not, as was hitherto said, the author. [. . .] a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination” (148).
24
One of the objects filmed in Gabriel’s final attempt to record himself for posterity is a copy of
film theorist André Bazin’s essay What is Cinema? A staple text in film studies, Bazin advocates cin-
ema’s roots in documentary. He also sees art as a means of putting off death: “If the plastic arts were put
under psychoanalysis, the practice of embalming the dead might turn out to be a fundamental factor in
their creation. The process might reveal that at the origin of painting and sculpture there lies a mummy
complex. The religion of ancient Egypt, aimed against death, saw survival as depending on the continued
existence of the corporeal body. Thus, by providing a defense against the passage of time it satisfied a
basic psychological need in man, for death is but the victory of time. To preserve, artificially, his bodily
appearance is to snatch it from the flow of time, to stow it away neatly, so to speak, in the hold of life”
(9).
25
Plato’s cave provides a seminal point of reference in theories of film spectatorship (see, for
example, Jean-Louis Baudry “The Apparatus”). Baudry’s approach to spectatorship is informed by psy-
choanalysis and focuses on the illusion under which the spectator identifies with what s/he is watching,
thus facilitating, in Baudry’s opinion, ideological interpellation of the spectator. “One always returns to
the scene of the cave: real effect or impression of reality,” he begins (206-23). “The entire cinematographic
apparatus is activated in order to provoke this simulation: it is indeed a simulation of a condition of the
subject, a position of the subject, subject and not reality” (222).
26
For an image of the installation, consult Macchi’s website: http://www.jorgemacchi.com/es/
obras/106/guia-de-la-inmovilidad. Macchi also has an installation titled “Buenos Aires Tour,” which
creates a psychogeographical Subte map of Buenos Aires, whereby the station names are marked by an
emotion, rather than their name. To see how Pensotti uses the image on the home page of his own website,
see: www.marianopensotti.com.
27
Gustavo Taretto’s film Medianeras (2011), as the title suggests, uses the sidewalls of Buenos
Aires as a symbol for society’s blinkered approach to navigating through the city, coupled with a series of
SPRING 2017 45
miscommunications and misencounters between neighbours who, despite living next door to one another,
meet virtually in an online chat forum.
28
Silvia R. Tandeciarz “Secrets, Trauma, and the Memory Market,” discusses El secreto de sus ojos
in relation to what she terms the “global memory market,” exploring the commercial success of memory
films. She also gauges this on Oscar recognition. Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s film, No (2012), was
also nominated for the category of Best Film in a Foreign Language, further reinforcing her argument
and suggesting its relevance beyond the case of Argentina.
29
This is the main avenue connecting the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, and the National
Congress and is normally the main thoroughfare for demonstrations.
30
The use of McDonald’s may seem to be something of a stereotype, but it is worth remembering
that the economy of the theatrical stage means that props necessarily condense meaning and are required to
carry the full symbolic weight of the phenomenon to which they refer. McDonald’s has been an important
symbol of globalization in its corporate form in Latin American popular culture. Examples are numerous:
the narratives of McOndo, edited by Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez, fuse the global, urban symbol
of McDonald’s with reference to the rural narratives of magical realism (Macondo) in order to explore
urban living in Latin America under the influence of North American popular culture.
31
See http://marianopensotti.com/enciclopedia.html.
32
See also Alice in the Cities.
33
Pensotti and Tirantte create a similar effect in their previous collaboration, El pasado es un
animal grotesco (2012), using a revolving set divided into four interior spaces that represent the lives
of four characters. The performance has a similar thread structure to Cineastas; as the set revolves, the
protagonist of the previous space becomes the narrator of the next story, using a roving microphone to
create the effect of a voice-over narrative. Hence the stories live inside one another in a Moebius-type
configuration that is created in perpetuity by the performance’s mobile circularity.
34
The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, is a film about insurance salesman Truman Burbank
(Jim Carrey), whose entire life, unbeknownst to him, is a popular television show. The limits of his world
and the limits of the television series are synonymous. By the time Cineastas draws to a close, the two
spaces—that of the real below and that of the film above—have conflated and Mariela, like Truman, finds
herself in a giant television set replicating her origins. Her world has become a giant fiction.
35
Discussion with Cecilia Sosa on the contribution to this special edition of the Latin American
Theatre Review.
36
One example is when Mariela draws inspiration from the musicals she is documenting: “Yo
también tengo que ser entusiasta, como esas películas con Lenin encarando a las masas. Esa es la onda.”
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SPRING 2017 49
Dancing Affect in the Aftermath of Loss: El loro y el cisne and

Argentina’s Generation “In Between”
Cecilia Sosa
Alejo Moguillansky’s third film, El loro y el cisne (2013), mischievous-

ly articulates the dancing landscapes of an outlandish Argentina through an
unusual love story with autobiographical components. The film seems to
elude a conventional analysis. It could be read as an improbable southern
remake of Swan Lake, drawing upon the rehearsals of Grupo Krapp, an Ar-
gentine experimental, independent dance company. Alternately, El loro can
be viewed as a quirky rom-com in which the director surreptitiously forms
part of the romance while the characters flirt constantly at both sides of the
camera. The film could also pass as a contorted musical or as a memoir of
first-time fatherhood. El loro is most likely all of the above, and more.
Rather than consider El loro’s enfolded puzzle of screens, stages, and
lives as a threat to the idea of generic purity, I propose that it sheds light on
a new body of work, an upcoming hybrid genre within Argentina’s contem-
porary filmic and theatrical production. In particular, I examine how this
southern version of a classic ballet fable provides a playful overlap between
documentary and fiction, while calling into question traditional boundaries
across the arts. In dialogue with Homi Bhabha’s theories on postcolonial
literature and recent affect studies, I show how Moguillansky’s crossover of
genres provides a powerful transnational critique of what it means to be a
Latin American artist. Ultimately, I contend that El loro features a language
breakdown for the aftermath of Argentina’s last dictatorship (1976-1983). In
doing so, it serves to envision the current dramas of a young generation for
whom the resonances of the traumatic past are starting to fade away.
Act 1: Meeting the Director

Alejo Moguillansky was born in 1978 in Buenos Aires, two years after
a coup d’ etat led to a cruel bio-political regime responsible for kidnapping,
torturing, and destroying politically engaged subjectivities. The experience
of terror and loss vanished 30,000 lives, infamously known as los desapare-
cidos. When democracy returned in 1983, civil society was left with no bod-
ies to be mourned. Against that contested background, which led to a decade
of poverty and rough neo-liberal policies in the 1990s, Moguillansky’s work
has defended its right to be political in a non-traditional sense. His filmog-
raphy includes the short films Lola/Gonzalo (2001) and Un modo romántico
de vivir su vida (1999), as well as La prisionera (2006), which premiered
at Berlinale, and Castro (2009), his second feature film, which was award-
ed the prizes for Best Film and Best Cinematography at the Independent
Film Festival of Buenos Aires (BAFICI) in 2009, premiered internation-
ally at Locarno’s Festival, and was shown at more than 25 festivals in 30
countries. More recently, he directed El escarabajo de oro (2014), awarded
the prize for Best Argentine Feature Film at BAFICI (2015).1 Alongside
Mariano Llinás, Agustín Mendilaharzu, and Laura Citarella, Moguillansky
also founded El Pampero Cine, a renowned independent production house
that promotes the talented work of his generation. Furthermore, he has been
the scriptwriter for many films directed by friends and colleagues and has
served as the editor and montage expert for more than 15 films.2
In the area of theatre, Moguillansky co-directed El amor es un francoti-
rador with Lola Arias and regularly collaborates with the Grupo Krapp, in
which his partner, Luciana Acuña, directs and performs. As a couple, Mo-
guillansky and Acuña also staged the theatrical piece Por el dinero (2013),
which focuses on the domestic struggle of a family of artists who depend on
international funding and which could be read as El loro’s counterpart and a
live bio-drama emerging out of the backstage of the film.3 Currently, while
he prepares the musical Film por dinero, Moguillansky has just released La
vendedora de fósforos (2017) at BAFICI. This fictional film also has a docu-
mentary component that draws on the attempts of the German avant-garde
composer Helmut Lachenmann to put together an opera piece at the Teatro
Colón in Buenos Aires when the orchestra went on strike at the end of 2012
(Fernández Irusta).
This prolific background has positioned Moguillansky as a main con-
tributor in an emerging circuit of young directors based largely in Buenos
Aires. This group of cinema and theatre-makers, born during or after Argen-
SPRING 2017 51
tina’s last dictatorship, has mostly avoided making political statements or

proposing revisions of the past like those that were made during the Kirch-
ner period (2003-2015). Contrasting with the minimalistic profile of the
neo-realist directors included in the so called “Nuevo Cine Argentino,” this
wave of hybrid artists has staged playful, stylish, and experimental propos-
als that have populated stages and screens with live compilations of experi-
mental music, surrealist poetry, and dance, thereby contesting traditional
boundaries among the arts. Overall, these productions have attempted to
maintain a playful and sophisticated tone against what these artists consider
overexposed political inquiries, mostly coming from artists who champion
normative readings of the traumatic past. In Moguillansky’s case, this aes-
thetic autonomy also hides a silent political platform. “Soy argentino, soy
político. Creo que las formas pueden ser algo político, no sólo los argu-
mentos,” he has explained (Fernández Irusta). As I will explore here, this
impulse has transformed Moguillansky´s disparate mise-en-scenes into sur-
reptitious political stages.
Act 2: Mocking the Transnational

El loro was first released in April 2013 at BAFICI, a major event for
international cinema and an experimental space for the younger generations.
In October of that year, the film was applauded at the London Fest. The in-
ternational appeal of a seemingly minor and self-founded piece should not
come as a surprise.4 The paradox of creating art from the margins has be-
come a pervasive trope in Moguillansky’s filmography, a subtle and ironic
force that has circulated from his first piece to his latest while enacting a
never-ending series of iterations and displacements. In El loro, this query
enfolds an extra twist. Rather than being merely “packaged” to fit dispa-
rate transnational contexts, the film provides a sharp reflection on its own
marginal and presumably amateur mode of production while circulating an
impulse of resistance among Moguillansky’s contemporaries.
Tensions between the local and the global become grounded in the film
when an unlucky American producer arrives in Buenos Aires to make a doc-
umentary on the current dance landscape in Argentina. The documentary is
supposed to be distributed across Latin American television channels in the
US, “de Miami a New York.” If this point of departure seems to champion
colonial binaries, El loro ultimately dismantles such normative distinctions.
The shooting of the alleged dance documentary —a film within the film—
provides the perfect excuse to enhance the film with a stunning series of live
rehearsals of different dance companies, including the Ballet Contemporá-

neo del Teatro San Martín, the Ballet Folklórico Nacional, and the Ballet
Clásico del Teatro Argentino, as well as the Grupo Krapp. At the same time,
sophisticated documentary footnotes contribute to an intimate and playful
portrayal of the main characters of the local dance scene. The tensions en-
crypted in the film’s narrative are diachronically highlighted through a se-
ries of archival interviews that bear, as the reverse shot, the unpleasant face
of the American producer. Drawing upon the cultural exchanges between
the center and the so-called “experimental margins,” Moguillansky’s film
ultimately emerges as a lighthearted test of the ways in which “the agency
of the colonised can be articulated” (McRobbie 106). Before unpacking the
postcolonial aspects of the film, however, there are some autobiographical
elements that must be considered.
Act 3: An Experimental (and Unattainable) Dance Group

In 2011, Moguillansky’s partner, Luciana Acuña, was rehearsing a new
piece with her company, the Grupo Krapp.5 The rehearsals eventually led to
Adonde van los muertos (Lado B), an experimental dance piece whose main
theme was death, or rather the possibilities of representing it (Yaccar). In the
meantime, Moguillansky became obsessed with the creative process of the
company and started filming the rehearsals. As he says in an interview, the
Grupo Krapp’s spirit reminded him of a romanticized youth in which every-
thing seems to be done without money or resources (Cruz). Still, that was
barely enough to make a film. “Cuando comenzamos a filmar la película, no
teníamos la menor idea de la forma que tendría, del destino de sus personajes;
mucho menos del destino del film,” confessed Moguillanksy in an interview
(Cine Documental 188). At some point, the director decided to call Rodrigo
Sánchez Marino (better known as Loro), the sound engineer for Pampero Cine,
to help record the creation of the dance performance, and it was while watch-
ing Loro document the Grupo Krapp’s rehearsals that the filmmaker decided
to make him part of the story. From early on in the film, attentive spectators
might notice Loro’s figure, mysteriously reflected in the mirrors of different
studios, impassively recording the dance rehearsals with his conspicuous mi-
crophone. In fact, Loro’s attempts at capturing every sign of life generated
a parallel choreography, which tended to overlap with what was being per-
formed on stage, the filmmaker said (Cine Documental 189). As a result, the
narrative of the film increasingly became more biographical, moving beyond
the main territory of the dance into a celebration of both fiction and real life.
SPRING 2017 53
Moguillansky’s film is informed by neverending layers of documen-

tary and fiction. In this context, Loro’s character turns out to be crucial in
articulating the enfolded game of screens and stages proposed by the film,
in which he also acts as the sound engineer working for the American docu-
mentary. From the first scene, which shows him reading the letter in which
his girlfriend dumps him, his character moves towards the centre of the
film. As Loro’s emotional breakdown continues to unfold, the documentary
team eventually engages with the Grupo Krapp in order to find something
“más contemporáneo,” as the producer says in the film. While recording the
rehearsals of the company, Loro falls in love with Acuña. “Todo lo que pasa
en el film es real. Salvo, esperemos, el romance entre Lu [his partner] y el
Loro,” joked the director (Cine Documental 188). Moguillansky follows
Jean-Luc Godard’s tradition, alleging that, for him, there is no difference
between documentary and fiction: “La fusión es lo que más me interesa”
(Bernades). In any case, the emergence of the “real” took an unexpected
turn; during the dance rehearsals Acuña became pregnant in real life. While
filming the fictional romance between his partner and Loro, Moguillansky
ended up recording the process of becoming a father for the first time
Act 4: A Love Triangle (and a Gigantic Mic)

A peculiar love story emerges in the background of Moguillansky’s film.
As a loquacious ballet instructor of the Ballet Clásico del Teatro Argentino
de la Plata anticipates in one of the film’s early archival interviews: “Todas
las historias en el mundo del ballet son idénticas. Siempre hay un triángulo
amoroso, como en la vida real. Y también está la lucha entre el Mal y el
Bien, y la lucha por la supervivencia.” He also introduces his own version
of Swan Lake’s evil with a laugh: “Un señor que debe tener un mambo en su
cabeza [a kind of loopy guy] que tiene el poder de transformar doncellas en
cisnes.” The love triangle that animates Moguillansky’s film has a real-life
component, which emerges as a twisted reverberation of Swan Lake. The se-
quence finishes in another dance studio with a zoom onto Luciana Acuña’s
face, ecstatically admired by Loro in the distance. Dressed in a fairy-blue
dress, the only woman in the Grupo Krapp strikes a contemporary version
of a postcolonial princess and also an unusual kind of swan. This south-
ern Oddette is also the filmmaker’s partner in real life. Boundaries between
documentary and fiction blur once again.
Loro’s nonstop attempts to register each piece of the experience delin-
eate a clumsy anti-hero character who could be thought of as Moguillansky’s
Photo: Fernando Lockett
alter ego. He appears to embody the filmmaker’s archival anxiety, suggest-

ing an enhanced form of subjectivity in which his old-fashioned microphone
is not simply a documentary tool, but rather a virtual prosthesis of his own
self. The mic not only reminds us of how much technologies frame the way
reality is perceived in contemporary times, but also highlights the overlap
of temporalities that coincide in current societies, a process that Bhabha has
described as the “jet lag” inside the contemporary. Assuming that Loro’s ex-
panded hearing can actually listen to the resonances of that jetlagged post-
colonial twirl, I propose to read the transcultural atmosphere emerging in
Moguillansky’s film in connection with the resilient effects (and affects) of
the experience of loss embedded in contemporary Argentina
Act 5: The Transnational Swan

As with all classics, Swan Lake invites iteration and resistance. Varia-
tions of this traditional ballet have covered all possible genres and themes,
including Japanese manga, the Hollywood version Black Swan (2010), and
the recent race queries in A Ballerina’s Tale (2015).6 Yet Moguillansky’s
film performs another task; he proposes a twisted version of the classic in
order to transform his own marginal background into an empowered critique
of postcolonial regimes of cultural production. El loro is all about mimicry,
translation, and subversion. This dynamic can be seen early on in the film,
when spectators are shown a magnificent rehearsal by the Ballet Clásico
SPRING 2017 55
del Teatro Argentino de La Plata. Surrounded by a team of dancers and a

pianist, the ballet’s instructor mimics an archetypal sequence from Swan
Lake, which is shown on a small TV inside the studio. First choreographed
in Imperial Russia during the 1870s, the sequence also quotes Greek leg-
ends of swan maidens. The local instructor’s loose re-enactment offers an
empowered translation of the classic. His “translation” brings to mind the
work of memory scholar Aleida Assmann, for whom the prefix “trans-” in
“translational” not only relates to “transit” but also to “translation” (547).
Assmann recasts the transnational as “the cultural work of reconfiguring es-
tablished national themes, references and representations, images and con-
cepts” (547). In this vein, the local ballet instructor’s previous interpretation
of the love triangle as well as his version of the classic jeté, jeté, jeté of Swan
Lake reveal unexpected textures and tonalities, which connect the audience
with an experience of translation that can also be read as a political appro-
priation of global tropes.
As Gabriele Klein argues, popular dances work as eruptive expressions
of social and urban feelings (4). In Moguillansky’s film, bodies become
“surfaces of multi and transcultural adherence” (4), ultimately positioning
affective encounters as expressive of epidemic tensions between regional-
ization, globalization, and renationalization. From this perspective, El loro
envisions how traces of local trauma intersect with a broader fight in the
context of Latin American cities. In particular, the postcolonial turn of the
film is connected with two simultaneous but different critical operations.
The first involves the subaltern translation of a hegemonic classic and the
simultaneous entailing of a moral perspective. The second is the subversion
of colonial power’s attempts to exploit Latin American cultural production
as “exotic.” Both intersect in Moguillanky’s film and are given a particularly
mischievous turn, a frisky and humorous tone that also becomes a landmark
for a generation of artists mostly born after an experience of terror and loss.
Within this process of translations-iterations, El loro’s screen has been
populated by an alternative series of postcolonial heroes and villains. For
instance, Moguillansky portrays the American producer—the ballet instruc-
tor’s putative incarnation of Evil—spying through a window, making end-
less calls to sell his product to avid global publics. Swan Lake’s traditional
captive damsels have evolved into hardened Southern Cone warriors, who,
dressed in gracious tutus, are ready to promote their battle on a global scale.
The trumpets of a stunning Tchaikovsky classical orchestra mute the impish
conversations between the American producer and his local partner, making
room for vaulting bodies to offer a magnificent spectacle of postcolonial

redemption against hegemonic power.
Moguillansky accentuates the self-reflexive dimension of this battle
through a hectic spectre of montage operation, using inter-titles, excerpts of
documentary interviews, and the superimposition of screens, among other
techniques. He also combines text footage and overlapping images to stress
how hybridity not only works as a disruption of genres but also as a source
(or even a surplus) of irony that irradiates throughout the haptic surface of
the film. Contagion is the rule. I suggest that all of these overlapping mon-
tage experiments act as a visual “excess” that finally spills over national
borders. The idea of transnational “excess” identified by Assmann is a lead-
ing force that circulates throughout the film via different states of embodi-
ment. It expands its visual and affective power with the use of graceful bal-
lerinas and brave folkloric performers, finally landing at the Grupo Krapp’s
rehearsals, which are supposed to fulfill the postcolonial North’s request of
“algo más contemporáneo.”
Act 6: Mimicry and Resistance

As Bhabha expresses in The Location of Culture, the manner in which
colonised societies take on the culture of the colonisers is always part of the
process of mimicry, which exhibits a fluctuating balance of ambivalence.
This insight can be useful in exploring the figure of the American producer
in Moguillansky’s film. His attempts to capture the “authentic” dance scene
of the Southern margins is one of El loro’s ongoing jokes. The producer also
has a local partner, a naughty director/self entrepreneur (masterfully por-
trayed by Walter Jacob), who acts as the key interpreter (and translator) of
cultural differences. The foreign producer and the local director ultimately
embody a dynamic duo in which stereotypical tensions between the local
and the global are displaced onto a witty and self-conscious parable of post-
colonial ambivalence.
One scene in particular helps us to further grasp this precarious balance.
At one point, the producer and director are watching the Grupo Krapp’s re-
hearsals. As usual, Loro is obsessively recording every detail with his gigan-
tic microphone. One of the performers is attempting to put together some
unutterable movements. He stands alone in the middle of the studio, wearing
a white hat and unnerving dark glasses. The musicians are absorbed, sketch-
ing some tones. The performer does not look human. He flexes his knees
and slowly raises an arm towards the ceiling, accompanying his contorted
SPRING 2017 57
movements with disturbing high-pitched screams. The ineffable passage

disorients the duo. The producer follows the enigmatic choreography with
clear scepticism: “Is this contemporary?” he inquires doubtfully. The local
partner looks as puzzled as the producer. His painful ambivalence is almost
palpable; he looks trapped, almost helpless. But suddenly he sees the light:
“Yes, this is contemporary,” he asserts, quickly adding, “This is contem-
porary résistance!” He finishes the sentence in French with an enchanted
gesture. “Ré-sis-tance,” repeats the American producer, as if savouring the
French word in his mouth. A smile starts to appear on his face: “In Miami
they will love that,” he states exuberantly.7
The sequence is exquisitely performed by Luis Biasotto, a founding
member of the Grupo Krapp.8 The resonances of the scene unleash vari-
ous layers of uncertainty: Who is being mocked here? The producer? The
director? The experimental dance group? Ambivalence prevails. The figure
of the local director seems to confirm the extent to which the colonised
looks “almost the same but not quite” the same as the coloniser (Bhabha,
226-27). It could be argued that the local director has developed a “double
vision” that allows him to disclose the ambivalence of colonial discourse
while at the same time disrupting its authority. Moguillansky portrays the
local director’s pressures well; since he has a product to sell, he opts to
mimic a complicity with the foreigner to gain his favour. The ludicrous
scene appears to be planted inside of Moguillansky’s film, as if the Grupo
Photo: Fernando Lockett

Krapp’s members (in some putative sense, the colonised) were mocking
the pretensions of documenting the local scene as a type of exotic trea-
sure. The sequence emerges as a kind of “untranslatable residue,” to borrow
Walter Benjamin’s expression, that haunts cultural difference, showing how
mimicry —and, broadly, also translation—provides space for contestation
(McRobbie, 101).9 The scene can also be thought of as a provocative laugh-
ter coming from the margins.
In the following sequence, the Grupo Krapp’s members are interviewed
about the meaning of the term “contemporáneo” in their work. Biasotto
speaks about an association of resistance with a sense of dislocation: “La
idea de resistencia tiene que ver con la sensación de sentirte descolocado
todo el tiempo. [. . .] Es estar todo el tiempo descolocándote, como ca-
yendo,” he argues. Interestingly, this idea of resistance does not seem to be
related to any sort of empowerment, but rather to a sense of failure: “Sabés
que va a fracasar, que todo puede fracasar en cualquier momento. Sabés
que te estás hundiendo pero seguís ahí, escarbando, en el medio de la oscu-
ridad,” the performer adds. This sense of vulnerability, of being off-centre
all the time, can be associated with the feeling of “giving over to others,”
or, being “undone by each other,” to borrow Judith Butler’s words (23). In
this vein, it stands in strong contrast with the figure of the local director,
who mimics braveness. Those opposing layers show the precarious balance
that rules Moguillansky’s film. However, the force of the local also iterates
a dissident impulse, which flows from the Grupo Krapp’s rehearsals to the
film’s spectators, who might be seen exit a screening feeling empowered
and chanting “Résistance, Résistance. . . !”
Act 7: The Appeal to the Collective

Aleida Assmann asserts that the transnational can be defined as that
which “spills over and seeps through national borders” (546). Drawing upon
this, I suggest that an attention to the transnational “surplus” that arises from
Moguillansky’s film might also help to articulate a particular tension be-
tween the local and the global in place in contemporary Argentina. In partic-
ular, I want to make the case that Moguillanksy’s film registers a fascination
for the collective that became quite poignant during the Kirchernist period
(2003-2015) and simultaneously highlights another stage in the experience
of mourning.
Moguillanksy’s film does not portray bodies in the public sphere but
rather in dance studios and theaters. Yet El loro effectively nurtures the flows
SPRING 2017 59
of intensity that circulate through the dancing bodies, ultimately harnessing

this collective energy and making it its own. The particular atmosphere that
circulates throughout the film, I propose, draws upon a rediscovered appeal
to the collective that grew in importance during Néstor Kirchner’s (2003-
2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s administrations (2007-2015).
Moguillansky’s attraction to documenting the voluptuousness of the danc-
ing bodies on stage mirrors the affective tonality of that period in which
the power of the multitudes retook the streets. This could be witnessed dur-
ing the anniversary of the military coup on March 24 every year; the cel-
ebrations of the bicentenary of the May Revolution in 2010; the impressive
mourning rituals in the wake of Néstor Kirchner’s death that same year;
the enthusiastic interventions of La Cámpora, a youth movement within the
Frente para la Victoria party that made a cult of the former president’s re-
membrance; as well as the demonstrations in support of Cristina Fernández
de Kirchner, which continued as an expression of solidarity and resistance
even after the official party was defeated in December 2015 by a right-wing
economic coalition led by businessman Mauricio Macri.
In line with recent work in affect studies, I consider “affect” to be the
particular vector or force that “arises in the midst of in-between-ness: in the
capacities to act and be acted upon” (Seigworth and Gregg 1). In that sense,
I suggest that Moguillanksy’s film explores what a body can do and how
it can affect others in a particular political period, which eventually might
become expandable to other landscapes. This proposal is also attached to
my long-term interest in finding ways of “thinking beyond or outside of
representation,” as Jo Labanyi has phrased it (223). Indeed, there was some-
thing very much “corporeal” during Kirchnerism, when multitudes went
back on the social surface, willing to remake the public sphere. It was an
epoch in which the multitudes emerged not as the dangerous, terrifying, and
unpredictable forces that Sigmund Freud and Argentine writer José María
Ramos Mejía proposed—an attitude championed by typical anti-Peronist
literature—, but rather as capable of displaying a joyful and contagious in-
tensity while staging alternative forms of being together.10 This affective
tone is also present in Moguillansky’s film. The flows and rhythms of the
performers on stage highlight how bodies interact with one other and are
transformed by the effect (and affect) of those encounters. This appeal to
what bodies can do seems to overturn Moguillansky’s denial of the politi-
cal in his work. It sheds light on a bodily “excess” that suggests alternative
forms of cultural identification and belonging.
Act 8: The Third Space or a Generation “In Between”

The performative character of cultural translation is exacerbated in Mo-
guillansky’s film. Ultimately, a film documenting the rehearsals of different
dance companies introduces a fragile play of gazes where screen and stages
reflect and unfold in each other as in a hall of distorted mirrors. This media-
tion gives shape to a virtual area “in between” genres, an ambivalent space of
enunciation that also suggests an embodied form of knowledge. I propose that
this hybrid space might help rethink the idea of community in other societ-
ies emerging from loss. Drawing upon Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional
Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), I
propose that Moguillansky’s film suggests an appealing encounter between the
postcolonial trauma and the local resonances that Argentina’s last dictatorship
left on the generations born during or after the military dictatorship.
If Rothberg’s approach provides the opportunity to build dialogic forms
of solidarity across traumatic pasts (Assmann 551) while proposing a cultural
translation of Argentina’s national drama into a broader context, I want to ex-
plore the relationship between affect and the way in which embodied memo-
ries can be addressed as corporally lived, rather than crystalized in fixed forms
of memorialisation. Moguillansky’s film helps to give a sense of the latest turn
in contemporary Argentine production. In particular, it contributes to the iden-
tification of the unexpected doorways that have emerged out of grief, mainly
a non-normative and playful approach to loss. To address this, however, it is
necessary to consider first the particular ways in which the Grupo Krapp’s
rehearsals are incorporated within El loro’s narrative.
For the first part of the performance Adonde van los muertos (lado A),
the dance company invited 15 fellow artists to propose different possibili-
ties of staging death.11 Although the different proposals were not included in
Moguillansky’s film, the responses were surprising. Death was either pic-
tured as a personal rhythm, a texture of time, an unattainable sound, or the
moment in which a performance gestures towards its end. To some extent,
they all gave a sense of an aftermath. The proposals were recorded and
shown on a big screen during the Grupo Krapp’s performance. On stage,
the group enacted those ideas, providing a novel virtual crossover of im-
ages, bodies, and sounds, which created a generational platform of embod-
ied ways of responding to death. To some extent, art worked as a collective
instrument in addressing the ongoing traces of mourning.12
In the second part of the performance, Adonde van los muertos (lado B),
a playful spirit dominated the stage, as already suggested by the sequence
SPRING 2017 61
of the bizarre screaming creature included in Moguillansky’s film. That

bouncy spirit worked as the common code, a sticky fluidity that managed
to circulate from the Grupo Krapp’s production to Moguillansky’s film. The
playful style of the group also draws from real life: “Tenemos un código
compartido. Recorrimos una vida juntos. El humor es inherente a nosotros”,
says Acuña in an interview (Yaccar). Moguillanksy’s film goes a step fur-
ther: It makes a festival of seemingly minor episodes in which the perform-
ers chase each other, improvise a skate contest or try a new choreography
outside traditional spaces, ultimately just enjoying the fact of being together.
This tone helps to create a different form of the collective and, in doing so,
the film also captures an alternative sense of the comical, which is embed-
ded in the new wave of Argentine production of which Moguillansky is
a part. This bouncy mood is not necessarily the dark humour previously
enacted by the descendants of those disappeared by the dictatorship, but
is more childish and indeed auto-referential.13 If black humour functioned
as a silent platform that informed the children of the disappeared’s produc-
tion, within this emerging body of work there seems to be no conflict that is
politically grounded. The source of drama has become more existential and
even unattainable. The humour that has emerged is naïf, unrelated, almost
immature. Nevertheless, it still provides the lens through which a new wave
of producers perceives reality, including their relationship with death.
As suggested by the screaming creature with the dark glasses in the film,
by 2011 the Grupo Krapp’s interrogations of death seemed to have reached
a level of absurdity and even stagnation. The radical eccentricity of that
odd creature gestures toward a deconstruction of movements where tradi-
tional disciplines have been dismantled. Its contorted movements also bear
witness to a certain reluctance to being translated into a global language.
The bizarre creature ultimately displays an uneasy form of stillness—al-
most an oxymoron for a dance company—, which suggests an alternative
dynamic of work. As Klein suggests, “Dance forms are an element of power
relations, which manifest themselves as ‘body politics’” (4). The feelings
of ambivalence and fragility emerging in the Grupo Krapp’s performance
suggest cultural tensions and crossovers that also illuminate the moment in
which the process of translation becomes specific, or rather, political.
In Adonde van los muertos (lado B) the Grupo Krapp presented death
as a sort of dislocated poem. The following are some of the questions that
were incorporated into the performance: “¿A qué hora preferirías morir?
¿Te gustaría ser el último humano sobre la Tierra? ¿Creés en Dios? ¿Cómo
harías para desaparecer? ¿Sabés dónde dejaste tu auto? ¿Las palabras ‘arte
contemporáneo’ tienen algún sentido para vos?” (Cruz). These ruminations
function as haikus that speak to the sense of disengagement of a generation,
its feeling of being “in between” languages, even while inside its own city
and culture. I propose that the Grupo Krapp’s haikus show how a younger
generation is trying to build an alternative connection with a culture that
has become strange. Drawing upon those live rehearsals, El loro suggests
embodied forms of memory transmission that might help this generation to
work through this experience of loss, against certain forms of institutional
mourning. In doing so, Moguillansky’s film also addresses the internal vi-
brations of a generation for which the traumatic past might have started
fading away.
In both parts of the Grupo Krapp’s production, trauma and performance
were knotted together. Death worked as a space of creation, a stimulus that
mobilises dance. This new entanglement between creation and loss shows
how much grief has gone through the process of “countersignature,” to bor-
row Jacques Derrida’s term (220-21). It might also be related to a sort of
“belatedness” in the experience of grief, following Marianne Hirsch’s ru-
minations on the “postmemorial gap,” which she first explored in her es-
say “The Generation of Post-memory.” Rather than destroying any political
meaning, the convoluted movements of the bizarre creature enacted by the
Grupo Krapp gave shape not only to a collective form of creation but also
to an embodied response to death. Drawing upon this, Moguillanksy’s film
shows how the productions of the group responded to a communal atmo-
sphere that exceeded its individual members. It is precisely this collective
environment that sheds light on a generational imaginary in which the ef-
fects of mourning are translated into an experience of body-to-body trans-
mission. This resilient mode of bereavement has created novel imaginaries
for transnational gateways, which show how the aftermath of loss has also
brought new pleasures to the present.
Act 9: The Performance of Life

If death was at the core of the Grupo Krapp’s rehearsals, life bursts
into Moguillanksy’s film. Following the ambiguous inter-title “Después de
las vacaciones,” spectators might jump in their seats at the sight of Acuña
showing off a prominently pregnant belly. There are no explanations. Her
pregnancy seems to come from nowhere, as if the group’s ruminations on
death created new life itself. Life and death are knotted together once again.
SPRING 2017 63
The belly occupies the centre of the scene. As if it holds the embodied prom-
ise of an imminent but still unintelligible future, the tummy is first scruti-
nized from a distance and then examined and even recorded with scientific
concern by the rest of the Grupo Krapp’s members. The whole scene is
muted until Loro turns on his ever-present microphone. The film then takes
another musical turn and the celebration of the pregnant body yields to a dif-
ferent dance, which takes place beyond the stage. Arguably, the love triangle
between Acuña, Loro, and Moguillansky has been completed behind the
camera. Moguillansky has admitted that:
“No es una película que yo hice para el público, es una película que
hice para ella [Acuña] y para los otros cuatro cretinos de Krapp.
[. . .] No lo hice pensando en ustedes o pensando en la gente del
BAFICI. No es un gesto. Es una película que hice como un pintor
trata de retratar a una persona que admira.” (Cine Documental 193)
The lines between fiction and reality again blur: Moguillansky is not
only the father of Acuña’s baby in real life, he is also the “father” of the film.
The pregnant belly can also be read as Moguillansky’s own relationship
with a new body of work and arguably a new, upcoming genre.
Act 10: The Bath

In a memorable scene, spectators follow Loro inside the toilet, where he
finds Acuña taking a bath. Her body is completely submerged in water, except
for her belly, which becomes, once again, the center of attention. She inquires
about Loro’s breakup. Unable to cope with his own feelings, he interposes
his huge microphone, seeking to obtain not only a toothbrush but also the
mother-to-be’s fears. His desperate attempts at recording life contribute to the
portrayal of cinema (and art) as the spectral substitution of something that is
lost. Acuña looks troubled. She talks about a dream in which her dead mother
was still beautiful and young: “Me tenía que despedir porque mis vacaciones
ya se habían acabado. [. . . .] Ahora hay algo de eso, como si se me acabaran
las vacaciones,” she says. “Lo del bebé me da mucha felicidad pero también
estoy triste por lo que se termina,” she continues. The scene conveys a strong
intimacy, a sense of closeness connected to the uncertainty about the future
that marks younger Argentine generations, those who were not first-hand wit-
nesses of the dictatorship’s terror. If Acuña’s pregnancy embodies a new space
of liberty that marks the emergence of an upcoming genre, her dream also
captures the broader feeling of uncertainty of an entire generation, for which
another kind of “holidays” might also be over.
The bath scene thus emerges as a secret layer of the local aftermath of
trauma. It provides the sense of “jetlag” that imbues the generation of those
born during or after the dictatorship. Within this collective atmosphere, hy-
bridisation functions as a response to a dialogic overlap of traumas. On the
one hand, it shows how this emerging body of work exhibits a feeling of
disengagement in relation to loss. On the other hand, it also addresses a sense
of being “in between” cultures, which has become particularly crucial for a
group of artists whose strategies of survival are tied to a transnational man-
agement of the arts. The bath scene brings both tensions together. It captures
the precarious sense of being an artist in a Latin American landscape as well
as the “in between” feeling that highlights the belatedness of the post-dicta-
torial past. This double disengagement also provides the fluid surface where
classics such as Swan Lake can be unashamedly iterated and re-signified.
In this context, I propose that Loro’s antihero character comments on
Moguillansky’s place in the artistic field. The director is also an underdog
within this new genre. He has also been “in between” worlds, not only as
a filmmaker and montage expert but also as a translator of various artistic
languages at home. As much as his films highlight the unexpected spaces
of contestation that have emerged inside subaltern cultures, they also show
how lateral characters can jump into leading roles.
Act 11: Dancing Affect

Moguillanksy’s film finishes in San Francisco, a small, provincial vil-
lage in northern Argentina. San Francisco has nothing to do with California,
as the film insistently reminds its audience. Rather, it is Acuña’s hometown
and also the place where her father lives in real life. There, she has sought
refuge to give birth to her daughter, Cleo. Loro eventually arrives, chasing
the mother-swan. In another temporal jump, viewers are shown Cleo as a
blossoming girl. While mother and girl play, Loro records Acuña’s father
and his friend, a retired choreographer, recalling old glories.14 Moguillan-
sky’s camera playfully registers the “excess” of locality of these bodies; the
director once remarked that he loved the idea of showing these bodies hap-
pily drinking a beer as the final landscape in his film (Cruz).
Captured in an ecstatic summer joy, the end of the film seems to take
place “off the map.” In this peaceful scenario, away from Buenos Aires’
theaters, El loro offers a last, gripping eruption of the real. Acuña and Loro
are seated next to the swimming pool. She tells him about another dream.
It is mostly a nightmare, in which suicidal babies immolate themselves in
SPRING 2017 65
the name of the official party. Baby Cleo is also a fanatic martyr of the
government, eventually also jumping into the void. In horrid contrast to
the tranquil summer, Acuña’s nightmare points to political activism as the
cause of the infants’ death. Her dream initially seems to offer an extreme
possibility of staging death, a continuation of the work begun by the Grupo
Krapp in Adonde van los muertos. As I have argued with María Delgado, the
dream also appears as the horrid and distorted face of the Kirchnerist narra-
tive, a period in which younger generations recovered a pleasure for politics
(244).15 However, next to the pool, words do not seem to matter anymore.
Loro’s attempts to lecture on Acuña’s dream fade into an undistinguished
“blah, blah, blah” that appears on the screen. With no script to follow, spec-
tators are left to observe the couple swimming. What matters are bodies,
skin, the tactile experience of the summer light. In this local fairy tale, Loro
kisses the swan.
I suggest the last scene of the film could be read as a dance, a strange
choreography of bodies under the summer light. For Klein, there is some-
thing “untranslatable” about dance (256). This condition does not emerge
from its physical focus. Rather, she argues that what is indescribable in
dance, or what “fails to be described,” is some sort of “transcendental oc-
currence” (256). It seems to me that Moguillanksy’s film can offer an alter-
native perspective. The last scene in the swimming pool envisions how the
sense of “untranslatability” that Klein associates with dance can be more
productively related to the “pre-conscious” and the “pre-linguistic” ways in
which affect works (Massumi 30). In particular, it acknowledges the way in
which affect always exists in excess, an argument that also reminds me of
the way in which Assmann recasts the work of the transnational. By com-
bining these insights, I suggest that dance emerges in Moguillanksy’s film
mostly as a rhythm, a fold, a timing, and even as a continuous passage of
intensities that can be associated with a generational atmosphere, the par-
ticular twist embodied by what I call Argentina’s generation “in between.”
It is precisely this sense of “in between-ness” that blurs boundaries between
fiction and reality, stages and screens, private and public.
While referring to El escarabajo de oro, his following film, Moguillan-
sky mentions that the final process of montage works, for him, as a form of
music, a type of beat: “Yo en el montaje busco sobre todo una musicalidad.
Que los planos y las secuencias se sucedan como formas musicales, siguien-
do ciertos patrones rítmicos y ‘melódicos’” (Bernades). A similar sense of
musicality marks the swimming pool scene, providing the opportunity to
grasp in a very physical manner the ways in which affect, as well as dance,
work on an everyday basis, in opposition to the “transcendental” character
of dance championed by Klein. Rather than theorizing, Moguillansky’s film
literally dances affect in the aftermath of loss, not as a representation or an
illustration, but rather as the very material, tangible force that circulates in
between bodies while proposing a process of contagion, iteration, and sub-
version, which ultimately takes over lives, stages, and screens.
Within these endless vibrations, the characters of Moguillanksy’s film
expand into reloaded forms of autobiographical fiction. They show how
lives are formed by multiple layers of rhythms and memories suspended
in time. In this movement of translation, bodies become surfaces of “multi
and transcultural adherence,” as Klein would say (4). They illuminate the
circulation of affect that has emerged behind, underneath, and around the
local experience of loss in Argentina in a new exchange with postcolonial
landscapes. In doing so, Moguillanksy’s film envisions what might come
after trauma: a new, playful skin that addresses the re-contextualisation of
a fight, the choreographical and ostentatious gesture that is ultimately re-
lated to a certain sensuousness of the bodies coming back from loss. As the
last scene at the swimming pool beautifully grasps, this affective skin also
speaks about the potential of a hybrid, self-reflexive genre to connect differ-
ent fields, especially when words and scripts seem to fall apart.
Conclusions: Lives in Plural

Within Argentine discourses of nationhood, bodies have had a relatively
lateral role. I propose that Alejo Moguillansky’s film suggests a different en-
tanglement with the delayed resonances of the dictatorship’s trauma, which
also helps to highlight the centrality of the body in affective scenes. El loro
y el cisne’s ruling principle is as ludic as it is festive and addresses a new
distance that has been created in relation to Argentina’s traumatic past. This
gap not only speaks about the different types of stories that have come to be
expressed but also about the bodies that make those stories possible. This
ludic principle works as a platform of contagion, signalling a transgression
of genres, which highlights the “post-traumatic” times.
While affirming the sense of belonging of an urban, hybrid community,
Moguillansky’s film embodies the internal vibrations of a generation trying to
come to terms with its past. Against the myth of the Global South as an em-
bodiment of the exotic, El loro ultimately shows how local processes of grief
can also be “inherently and externally relational” (Assmann 547) and inevita-
SPRING 2017 67
bly implicated in larger processes of dialogue and exchange. Yet it also shows
the extent to which the local aftermath of loss resists translation into a global
language. Thus, Moguillanksy’s film contributes to a sense of a broader com-
munity—perhaps a privileged community—, a post-traumatic, “in between”
generation that feels off-centred, possibly trapped within an endless jetlag. As
the film portrays, this generational limbo is also interrupted by moments of
political irruption, mostly coming in the form of dreams. The dream scenes
help address two additional features of the post 2003 period: the emergence
of fiction as one of its most surprising reinventions and the renewed autobio-
graphical characteristics that this re-emergence of fiction exhibits.
In this context, El loro can also be seen as a language breakdown, an
aesthetic midpoint in which biographies return empowered by fiction. I
suggest that Moguillanksy’s film manages to capture a bright moment of a
poem in which lives are written in plural. It is a moment that emerges from
a “third space,” as Bhabha would say, from the outskirts of the postcolonial,
where stages, screens, and real lives are intimately mixed. A new postco-
lonial community might emerge precisely at the junction of those layers.
Yet, the idea of community needs to be recast here; the poetics of this com-
munity are as contorted as the Grupo Krapp’s movements. This community
has learned that failure is always around the corner. It is an “interstitial com-
munity” (Bhabha 331) that has arisen from the reverse side of a death poem.
Precisely there, however, certain forms of joy might also be waiting.
CONICET-Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero
Notes
1
In the film, Moguillansky portrays an Argentine filmmaker who, at odds with his Swedish part-
ner, undertakes an improbable mission to discover gold hidden in the north while at the same time pre-
tending to be shooting a documentary on the 19th-century politician Leandro N. Alem.
2
The list includes La rabia (Albertina Carri), Viola and Rosalinda (Matías Piñeyro), Historias
extraordinarias (Mariano Llinás), and Ostende (Laura Citarella), among others.
3
This group of artists has learned how to create personal pieces by drawing upon their everyday
conflicts. See Philippa Page’s article in this issue.
4
The body of work discussed in this issue shares the same international profile and marginal self-
founding, which Moguillansky describes as “películas huérfanas del sistema de subsidios” (Fernández
Irusta).
5
For more than 15 years, the Grupo Krapp has put together international shows that combine ex-
perimental dance performances with fabulous installations of screen and images, which reflect the different
backgrounds of the five members of the company. In Moguillansky’s film, they say they don’t identify
themselves as dancers, but rather as musicians and performers, or in some cases as “malos actores.”
6
In A Ballerina’s Tale (2015), a documentary on African-American ballerina Misty Copeland,
director Nelson George examines the ballet world alongside themes of race and body image.
7
Except for the French word “résistance,” the sequence is spoken in English during the film.
8
Luis Biasotto is also the director of the recent independent dance production Africa (2014),
which was exhibited at the Teatro San Martín and celebrated by the critics.
9
As Angela McRobbie argues, Judith Butler’s idea of “resignification” also echoes Homi Bhabha’s
notion of cultural translation (101). In both cases, iteration is perceived as a space for the unexpected.
10
In his piece Las multitudes (2012), the dramaturge Federico León also addresses the pleasures
of being together. For this colossal production, León brought on stage 160 performers of different na-
tionalities. In the piece, seemingly biological processes such as adolescence and aging are revised as
experiences of bodily encounter, knowledge, and social exchange.
11
The guests comprised a renowned list of theatre and film-makers, including Lola Arias, Fabiana
Capriotti, Fabián Gandini, Federico León, Mariano Llinás, Mariano Pensotti, Rafael Spregelburd, Diana
Szeinblum, François Chaignaud (France), and Stefan Kaegi (Switzerland).
12
The piece was also inspired by the sudden death of the illuminator, a close collaborator of the
Grupo Krapp.
13
During previous research, I have explored the ways in which dark humour worked as a platform
of survival for the children of the disappeared, empowering them with a new generational language to
cope with the absence of their parents. See “Humour and the Descendants of the Disappeared.”
14
The sequence portrays Blas Massafra, a friend of Luciana’s father and a famous choreographer
who passed away after the release of the film.
15
The parable of the dream is so extreme that it mocks the common allegations against former
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, for instance, her constant use of public broadcasts to channel
her long presidential speeches.
Works Cited
A Ballerina’s Tale. Directed by Nelson George, Urban Romances, 2015.

Assmann, Aleida. “Transnational Memories.” European Review, vol. 22, no. 4,
2014, pp. 546– 56.
Bernades, Horacio. “Quise que la cámara siempre se dejara llevar.” Página 12, 18
Oct. 2014. Accessed 21 Dec. 2016.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso, 2004.
Cruz, Alejandro. “De la escena a la pantalla.” Página 12, 30 Oct. 2013. Accessed
21 Dec. 2016.
Delgado, Maria, and Cecilia Sosa. “Politics, Memory and Fiction(s) in Contempo-
rary Argentine Cinema: The Kirchner Years.” A Companion to Latin American
Cinema, edited by Maria Delgado, Stephen Hart, and Randal Johnson, John
Wiley & Sons, 2017, pp. 238-68.
Derrida, Jacques. “As If I Were Dead: An Interview With Jacques Derrida.” Apply-
ing: To Derrida, edited by John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins, and Julian Wolfreys,
Macmillan, 1999, pp. 212–26.
SPRING 2017 69
El escarabajo de oro. Directed by Alejo Moguillansky, El Pampero Cine, 2014.

El loro y el cisne. Directed by Alejo Moguillansky, El Pampero Cine, 2013.
Fernández Irusta, Diana. “Albertina Carri y Alejo Moguillansky, en un encuentro
sobre cine y política en la Di Tella.” La Nación, 28 June 2016. Accessed 21
Dec. 2016.
Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory Seigworth. The Affect Theory Reader, Duke UP, 2010.
Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Post-memory.” Poetics Today, vol 29, no.1,
2008, pp. 103-28.
Klein, Gabriele. “Toward a Theory of Cultural Translation in Dance.” New German
Dance Studies, edited by Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht, U of Illinois P,
2012, pp. 247-58.
Labanyi, Jo. “Doing Things: Emotion, Affect, and Materiality.” Journal of Spanish
Cultural Studies, vol. 11, no. 3-4, 2010, pp. 223-33.
La prisionera. Directed by Alejo Moguillansky, Revolver Films, 2006.
La vendedora de fósforos. Directed by Alejo Moguillansky, 2017.
Lola/Gonzalo. Directed by Alejo Moguillansky, 2001.
Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke UP,
2002.
McRobbie, Angela. The Uses of Cultural Studies. Sage, 2005.
Moguillansky, Alejo, et al. “Sobre El loro y el cisne. Conversación con Alejo Mo-
guillansky, Luciana Acuña, Susana Tambutti y Ana Amado.” Cine Documen-
tal, vol. 14, 2016, pp. 186-206.
Ramos Mejía, José María. Las multitudes argentinas. Editorial Guillermo Kraft,
1899.
Reason, Matthew. “Archive or Memory? The Detritus of Live Performance.” New
Theatre Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1, 2003, pp. 82-89.
Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the
Age of Decolonization. Stanford UP, 2009.
Sosa, Cecilia. “Humour and the Descendants of the Disappeared. Countersigning
Bloodline Affiliations in Post-dictatorial Argentina.” Journal of Romance Stud-
ies, vol. 13, no. 3, 2013, pp. 75-87.
_____. Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship.
The Performances of Blood. Tamesis Books, 2014.
Un modo romántico de vivir su vida. Directed by Alejo Moguillansky, 1999.
Yaccar, María Daniela. “El humor es inherente a nosotros.” Página 12, 2 April
2016. Accessed 21 Dec. 2016.
Convocatoria IV Coloquio Internacional, Latinos en los Estados Unidos
La Casa de las Américas, a través de su Programa de Estudios sobre Latinos en los

Estados Unidos, convoca a su cuarto Coloquio Internacional bajo la temática de So-
cialización de Latinos en los Estados Unido: educación, religión y medios masivos
de comunicación, del 16 al 18 de octubre de 2017.
Se reflexionará acerca de la perspectiva del latino en los Estados Unidos como sujeto
social inmerso en nuevos espacios de socialización que generan procesos educativos
formales que constituyen rupturas en el establishment de esa sociedad, siendo al
mismo tiempo partícipes de otros de carácter informal y que se sustentan en agentes
como las religiones y sus instituciones, los medios de comunicación y las redes
sociales en Internet, así como la música, el deporte; áreas que también deseamos
visibilizar y hacer objeto de análisis. El Coloquio ofrece un espacio de acción con la
presencia de personas de origen latinoamericano y caribeño vinculadas a las artes,
las letras y las ciencias sociales y humanísticas y mantiene la perspectiva de acción
dirigida a los enlaces, redes, comunidades y gestores de espacios en los que se eduque
y se genere socialización. Se proponen como ejes temáticos centrales los siguientes:
1. Socialización de Latinos en los Estados Unidos.

2. Procesos educativos para Latinos en los Estados Unidos: estudiantes indocu-
mentados y espacios de formación no formal
3. Esfera pública, imágenes y representaciones de latinos desde los medios masivos.
4. Música y socialización.
5. Las religiones y sus instituciones como espacios para la socialización de Latinos
en los Estados Unidos.
Además centraremos una de las sesiones de trabajo al análisis de la historia de

la migración cubana hacia los Estados Unidos, la inserción de los cubanos y los
cubanoamericanos dentro de las comunidades latinas, la influencia de los nuevos
escenarios Cuba- EE.UU., y se hará un homenaje a la artista cubana Ana Mendieta.
RESÚMENES Y PONENCIAS
Los interesados podrán presentar ponencias individuales o paneles. Antes del 20 de julio
de 2017 deberá estar en nuestro poder un resumen de 250 palabras, con el título de la
ponencia y el nombre y apellidos del/a autor/a y la institución a la que pertenece. La
extensión de las ponencias no será mayor de 15 cuartillas mecanografiadas a doble
espacio, lo que equivale a 20 minutos de lectura oral. Las/os participantes deberán traer
junto con el texto impreso de su ponencia el texto en una memoria flash o un CD-ROM.
CASA DE LAS AMÉRICAS

3ª y G, El Vedado, La Habana, 10 400, Cuba, Telf. (537) 838-2706/09, extensión
129. Fax: (537) 834-4554
SPRING 2017 71
The Fantasy of the Real in Romina Paula’s Fauna
Brenda Werth
Romina Paula’s play Fauna is about the making of a film that will
never take place, a film that brings together a daughter, a son, an actress,
and a director in the attempt to tell the story of Fauna, a wild but well-read,
otherworldly being who over the course of her life transforms into Fauno.
Highly intertextual, reflexive, and subtly ironic, the play contemplates how
to tell the story of one’s life, how to capture what is true and real, and how to
decipher where reality ends and fiction begins. Paula distinguishes her work
from contemporary trends in documentary theater and biodrama1 by exploring
the ways in which the real manifests itself reflexively without breaking out
of the theatrical frame. While works by Argentine artists such as Vivi Tellas,
Lola Arias, Mariano Pensotti, and Federico León seek creative opportuni-
ties for the real to interrupt and break through the theatrical frame, Paula’s
Fauna offers a poetic reflection on what this slippage between the real and
the fictional means, and indeed what it means to aspire toward capturing the
real through performance.
In tandem with her exploration of the real, Paula proposes new gender
possibilities that creatively undermine normative categorization. In dialogue
with Judith Butler and others, I first analyze Paula’s treatment of the real, and
then turn specifically to the relationship between gender and the real in this
play to argue that Paula forces us to think more critically about the real, how
it is constituted, what is valued or disavowed as real, and to what extent the
real, as it is privileged in certain strands of contemporary theatre, may not
only be liberating in stretching the bounds of conventional theatre but may
also hold limitations in its prescriptions of normativity.
Premiered in 2013, Paula’s play Fauna follows Algo de ruido hace (2008)
and El tiempo todo entero (2009), the latter an adaptation of Tennessee Wil-
liams’ The Glass Menagerie, all three of which she has written and directed
with the theater company El Silencio.2 She has received overwhelming critical
praise for her dramaturgical work and has toured the international circuit,
premiering her plays in Brazil, Chile, Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium,
and Germany. In 2010, El tiempo todo entero won the Florencio Sánchez
Prize for best Argentine play, and in 2011 the play took part in the prestigious
Theatre du Rond Festival in Paris.
Like many artists of her generation, Paula thrives in diverse creative
roles: playwright, film actor, director, and novelist.3 The breadth of her work
reflects a generational trend to break down barriers that have traditionally
separated genres, particularly between theatre and film. In an interview with
Mercedes Halfon, Paula addresses this cross-pollination explicitly: “Cuando
nosotros empezábamos a estudiar actuación, el cine y el teatro eran dos esferas
separadas. No había actores de teatro en el cine. Y esto cambió completa-
mente, ahora hay una circulación natural entre los dos espacios.” (Halfon)
This “natural” intermingling has resulted in a creative new body of work in
Argentine theatre and film that is highly reflective of genre and how these
different forms of representation inform one another.4 Paula’s Fauna, a play
about the making of a film, falls squarely into this new aesthetic and practice.
What serves to heighten reflexivity even beyond the dialogue she estab-
lishes between film and theatre is the extraordinary intertexuality Paula infuses
into Fauna. Throughout the play she engages in dialogue with Calderón
de la Barca, Shakespeare, Horacio Quiroga, Rainer Maria Rilke, Dorothea
Lange, María Luisa Bemberg, Concepción Arenal, Roberto Arlt, and Juan
L. Ortiz. Paula explains, “Estas referencias literarias parten de un profundo
amor por la literatura, que no es una cuestión de enumeración” (Halfon).
And this love of literature comes across in the way she interweaves these
referents cleverly into the essential architecture of the play. Motivations for
writing literature vary, and Paula confesses that, for her, writing is more about
finding a form of protection than a form of exposure (Viola). She invokes an
eclectic canon of great literary and artistic figures and then reveals, in their
protective company, her own vulnerability through a probing examination
of what constitutes reality and fiction, love, truth, gender, life, death, experi-
ence, representation, and art.
Paula embarks on this quest both earnestly and in a subtle, self-parodying
fashion. For example, early on in the play, during a dialogue on the use of
metatheatrical techniques, one of the main characters, María Luisa, explains
in a nonchalant, mildly condescending tone to the director character, “El
escenario al que se refiere es la vida. Es un tópico eso, el de la vida como
SPRING 2017 73
teatro, está en Shakespeare, y en Calderón, es un tópico isabelino” (12). It is

possible to imagine Paula herself acknowledging that these grand ideas have
long been reduced to clichés, but through her work she shows that there are
ways of breathing new life and meaning into them. Describing her dramaturgy,
Jorge Dubatti writes, “[Q]uienes hablan de ‘muerte de la representación’ o
‘postdramaticidad’ comprobarían que esas categorías no son válidas para el
teatro de Romina Paula, quien multiplica la potencia de la ficción, el espe-
sor de las grandes situaciones dramáticas, y recupera el relato, la historia de
acontecimientos, la emoción y la monumentalidad de los personajes” (63).
Paula eschews the postdramatic, the biodramatic, and other documentary
techniques that are currently popular in Argentina as modes of exploring the
real and instead returns to the limitless potential of fiction. Ironically, as I will
argue below, through its interrogation of fiction, Paula’s Fauna provides one
of the most sophisticated and nuanced discussions on the real in contemporary
Argentine theatre.
Fauna
Structured into nine acts, Fauna joins onstage four characters who are
involved in the making of a film about Fauna, a legendary figure who in her
lifetime dressed like a man, translated Rilke, and rode her horse with abandon
through the campo until she was in her nineties. Julia, an actress, and José
Luis, a film director, arrive in the provinces where Fauna lived and meet with
her daughter and son, María Luisa and Santos, to learn more about Fauna’s
life. Halfway through the play, we learn that Julia had once seen Fauna from
a distance, and the vision affected her so deeply that she became obsessed
with the idea of creating a film about her life, though Fauna died before they
had the chance to meet and talk about that possibility. Over the course of the
play, debates erupt between the siblings and the creators of the film regard-
ing the authenticity of some of the events making up the life story of Fauna.
Characters argue about which episodes of her life to film and whether or not
it is even important or possible to try to remain faithful to the telling of her
“true” life story. Julia expresses her concern that perhaps she does not have
what it takes to perform the life of Fauna. But she identifies strongly with the
mythic figure, and halfway through the play she puts on the men’s clothes
Fauna wore after she became Fauno. Underlying all of the characters’ dis-
cussions of how best to represent the life of Fauna is a shifting, multivalent,
romantic tension. This tension manifests itself when characters take turn
rehearsing scenes from Fauna’s life, casting off prescriptive notions of gender
roles as they do so. The play ends with all of the characters professing their
love to someone and directing emotional uncertainty toward someone else,
leaving audiences with a vision of love that is complex and unpredictable in
its many forms and iterations.
In contrast to the intensity of emotion displayed by the characters, the
stage itself is austere and minimalist in design. Envisioned for a black-box
theater, the floor of the square-shaped stage space is covered by weathered
wooden planks. At stage left toward the back there is a wooden table fastened
with a saddle. As Halfon notes, the stage design reflects a departure in Paula’s
work and an attempt to move away from naturalist tropes. In an interview
with Halfon, Paula proclaims triumphantly, “¡Por lo menos no hay un sillón!
¡Ni son una familia!” Without the familiar naturalist props and the traditional
family unit, the play generates an uncertainty, an unsettling feeling that any-
thing could happen (Halfon). In fact, the most unusual stage details in this
play are the square-meter-sized holes in the wooden floor, filled with stones,
soil, and various stage accoutrements, and the places in the floor where the
boards seem to buckle, creating the sensation that the floor is barely able to
contain something that is about to erupt from below. Needless to say, these
holes and cracks in the floor provide a mysterious physical manifestation of
the poetic fissures that are alluded to in the text of the play.
Photo: Sebastián Arpesella

SPRING 2017 75
Fissures, Flashes, and Glimpses of Truth

The first act of the play begins with Julia (the actress) reciting a lengthy
fragment from Rilke’s poem “Todeserfahrung/Experiencia de la muerte” from
her perch on the saddle. In this poem Rilke offers a reflection on the performa-
tive roles we play in life, the sudden intrusiveness of death, and the loss of a
loved one. The third stanza in particular is of central significance to the play:
Pero cuando partías, irrumpió en este escenario
Un haz de verdad a través de aquella grieta,
Por la que te ibas: verde de verdadero verde,
Verdadera luz solar, bosque de verdad. (11)
Here Rilke describes the flash of reality or truth that is revealed at the
very moment in which the departed one disappears through a crack in the
stage of life. The image of this flash of truth, linked to the color green, recurs
throughout the play at key moments. Below I will elaborate on how these
flashes introduce moments of intense feeling and heightened consciousness
that coincide with experiences that also remain in the realm of the expres-
sionless.
The first episode concerns Julia’s encounter with Fauna. From a distance,
Julia describes the moment in which she sees Fauna appear on her horse:
“[D] repente del verde intenso por la lluvia sale un caballo, con una mujer a
cuestas, bah, una persona, no sabía ni qué era lo que estaba viendo” (23). We
are once again reminded of the Rilke poem in which a flash of truth emerges
from a crack on the stage. In this case, it is Fauna who breaks through the
brilliant green landscape, arresting in her intensity and yet impossible to fully
discern as man, woman, or even human. Julia continues, “[M]e miró por un
segundo, no sé cómo explicarles lo que sentí, una conmoción, no entendía si
ese terror tenía que ver con que corriera peligro, yo, por esta presencia pero
al mismo tiempo no era sólo terror, también era algo más, algo que tenía que
ver con el placer” (23). Julia describes witnessing Fauna for the first time
as an event that interrupted her frame of reference, a sublime encounter that
affected her mind “with a sense of overwhelming grandeur,” allowing her, in
a sense, to transcend herself.5 Though fleeting in duration—but a flash—the
moment is foundational for Julia, as it marks the beginning of her artistic,
intellectual, and personal infatuation with Fauna.
The second episode takes place in Act 2 and refers to the account San-
tos offers of the gruesome deaths of his two horses. Described as a kind of
Horacio Quiroga figure in the stage directions, Santos arrives onstage and
says to Julia and José Luis, “Tengo algo para ustedes que es verdad, que
es verdad” (27). He then proceeds to tell the story of how his horses were
devoured by a swarm of wasps near the river. He makes use of the historical
present in his account, which is commonly used in the dramatic narration of
past events, but here this usage seems to reflect the traumatic nature of the
episode as well, of first hearing the intense buzzing, then stumbling upon the
dead horses covered with wasps and having to run back to the river in order
to avoid being attacked by the wasps himself. In his account he describes the
thick, green foliage that surrounds the horses. After he finishes telling what
happened, Julia once again repeats the stanza from Rilke in which a flash of
truth emerges through the green. Here, Santos’ insistence on identifying the
death of his horses as something that is true or real “que es verdad” resonates
with Jacques Lacan’s definition of trauma as an encounter with the Real, or
that which is impossible and resists mediation or signification (164). Santos’
choppy narrative resurrects the event in the present, like a traumatic symptom
that resists symbolic assimilation.
Another disarming flash of truth occurs in Act 4, when Julia reflects on
the relevance of biographical accuracy in representing Fauna. The characters
are arguing over an episode from Fauna’s past in which she allegedly suffers a
bout of amnesia and is unable to recognize her husband, who has come to fetch
her and take her home. For the four characters, there is a lingering uncertainty
as to whether or not Fauna feigned amnesia or not during that episode, and it
is impossible to prove it one way or the other. In response to this uncertainty,
Julia proclaims the following: “Para mí no es lo mismo si me pasó o si es
algo que escribí. A lo mejor es algo que me pasó —pero justamente— como
fue un episodio de amnesia, no lo recuerdo y me lo contaron y como a mí me
avergüenza después solo puedo acercarme a ese dolor a través de la ficción,
a través de la construcción ficcional” (38). Here Julia introduces the role of
fiction in combating pain and reconstructing life narratives in the wake of
trauma. This marks one of the numerous moments in the play in which fic-
tion and the biographical are linked and are seen to mutually constitute one
another. But it is the reaction of the other characters to Julia’s statement that
reveals most clearly a flash of truth: “Algo misterioso sucede. Santos y María
Luisa se quedan mirándola como si Fauna se hubiese hecho presente, y José
Luis está un poco atemorizado” (38). The three characters are left in a state
of awe as they witness Julia’s sudden transformation into Fauna.
There is something of the uncanny here in this doubling of lives and their
seeming coalescence into one body. When it occurs on the theatrical stage, this
uncanny doubling aptly describes what actors aspire to in the theatre through
SPRING 2017 77
their performance of others. And yet, Paula complicates the significance of

this doubling, because while theatergoers might view Julia’s transformation
into Fauna as evidence of her Stanislavskian “becoming” of the character, the
onstage characters, María Luisa, José Luis, and Santos, react emotively to her
transformation as if witnessing the real resurrection of Fauna. Through the
introduction of these competing frameworks of perception, Paula shows that
modes of fiction and strategies of the real are both antagonistic and complicit
in the construction and representation of Fauna.
But what does it mean to refer to strategies of the real when talking about
a fictional play about a fictional film? Even in the play, José Luis, the director
character, makes it clear that the film they are making is not a documentary,
but a fictional film based on the life of Fauna (13). When I refer to strategies
of the real and their use in Fauna, I wish to draw attention to the ways in
which Paula employs the biographical and the personal in the play to con-
struct a sense of authenticity and realness that has little to do with historical
accuracy. Fauna is, after all, a fictional character, but creating a play about
the filming of her life, and in the process revealing some of her most personal
and vulnerable moments, all serve to imbue her character with a sense of
realness that to some extent even surpasses the realness of historical figures
whose lives have been archived in documentaries and memoirs.
One excellent example of how the biographical, and in this case the expres-
sion of personal experience, can accentuate a sense of realness occurs when
the four characters are discussing from which point to begin narrating Fauna’s
life in the film. The director wants to start with the scene in which Fauna re-
encounters her husband after he has left her for another woman, a trauma that
left her in an amnesiac state. While rehearsing, Julia interjects, “Perdón, ¿puedo
decir algo? A mí la escena me gusta, me parece potente en sí misma, pero lo
que no entiendo es, pensando en la película, por qué elegimos un momento
tan raro en la vida de Fauna para contar, un momento evidentemente triste y
traumático que la muestra débil y confundida” (37). Here Julia shows that she is
protective of Fauna and of the way she is represented. At another moment, Julia
says, “[H]ay algo en ella que me resulta profundamente familiar, como si ya la
conociera desde siempre” (26). Julia’s careful attention to how the biographical
details of Fauna’s story are filmed and the almost confessional tone she uses to
express the close bond she feels to Fauna serve to create an intimate, personal
atmosphere that draws in the audience affectively and makes spectators feel
part of something real that is happening onstage.
The play capitalizes on the newfound interest in the biographical that

has emerged globally across genres of cultural production in the last several
decades. For example, documentary film theorist Michael Renov identifies
a “turn to the subject” starting in the 1990s and a deeper exploration of sub-
jectivity as it is grounded in the personal and the experiential (xi, 177). From
the social sciences, Barbara Merrill and Linden West similarly attest, “There
has been a major turn towards biographical, autobiographical, life history or
narrative approaches in the academy over the last 30 or so years” (3). And
Leonor Arfuch invokes Philipe Lejeune’s notion of biographical space to
discuss the ways in which the subject has been ushered back into discourse
through a resurgence of biographical methods, memoirs, and personal inter-
views (17). In their definitions of the biographical, these theorists refer to
real, existing subjects, yet this new biographical mode is equally capable of
generating a sense of the real when employed in fiction.
I would put forth that Paula’s exploration of the biographical belongs to
what Beatriz Jaguaribe in her article “The Shock of the Real” has termed a
new “aesthetics of realism” or “realist encoding,” which may borrow from
documentary registers but is nonetheless fiction. Jaguaribe, too, views this
renewed interest in the real as a widespread phenomenon. She writes, “From
the manifestos towards an authentic cinema to the debunking of magical real-
ism by a new generation of Latin American writers, new forms of the ‘return
of the real’ have emerged as globalized narratives” (330). Jaguaribe identi-
fies the rich “terrain of symbolic mappings” that are a result of documentary
works that use fictionalizing strategies and fictional works that incorporate
documentary techniques (329). And yet, she notes that this borrowing of
codes and techniques between fiction and documentary does not conflate
the two modes: “The close contact between ‘fiction’ and non-fiction does
not necessarily erase the boundaries between the ‘real’ and the fictional, but
it questions the status of representation and our access to experience” (329).
This line of questioning is of central importance in Fauna, a work in which
characters are deeply invested in determining how the representation of a life
relates to the kind of access another person has to that life.
Paula explores the boundary between fiction and non-fiction or acting and
non-acting reflexively throughout her play, and she does this so inventively
that spectators are often unaware that a shift from acting to non-acting (yet
always within the theatrical framework) has taken place. For example, the
opening scene of the play features Julia on the saddle at the back of the stage
reciting Rilke. It is only when the director interrupts her and asks, “¿Qué era
SPRING 2017 79
esto?”, do the theatergoers begin to realize that what they had been watching
was part of a rehearsal for a film and did not belong to the “real” play. At
other moments as well, the characters’ transition in and out of acting and non-
acting is so subtle that spectators are only made aware that a change between
modes has occurred because of a comment made by one of the characters.
For example, a scene in which Julia and Santos are rehearsing a dialogue
reveals confusion as to whether or not they are in acting or “real life” mode:
SANTOS: Yo lo supe todo este tiempo.
ACTRIZ: ¿Qué es lo que supo?
SANTOS: Qué usted era una impostora, “Fauna.”
ACTRIZ: ¿Pero no dijo que no le sorprendía? No entiendo.
SANTOS: Es que sorprender no me sorprende, me descoronaza.
ACTRIZ: No estoy entendiendo.
SANTOS: ¿Qué es lo que no entiende? Usted no ama a ese hombre.
ACTRIZ: ¿A mi marido?
SANTOS: A ése (Señala a José Luis.)
ACTRIZ: Él no es mi marido. Es Fauno.
SANTOS: Es José Luis.
ACTRIZ: Ah, ¿ya cortamos? (57)
Characters onstage stop acting within the inner play, but the fourth wall
remains intact so characters continue to act within the outer play. This height-
ened metadramatic reflexivity resonates with what Joanna Page has identified
in contemporary Argentine documentary film as a trend toward re-examining
the relationship between acting, experience, and truth (73). In her discussion
of works by the Argentine filmmakers Martín Rejtman and Federico León
and Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho, Page argues that “by making
performance the subject of their documentaries” these filmmakers are able to
“consider acting, neither as an expression of authenticity nor as an exercise
in artifice, but as an encounter with forms of truth and experience that gen-
erates new knowledge” (84). Though Page is discussing documentary film
and Fauna is a work of fictional theatre, artists working in and across these
genres and registers nonetheless pose a similar set of questions on how truth,
experience, and knowledge interrelate and constitute one another.
Paula contemplates truth as flash encounters with love, death, and
art—ephemeral events that emerge and break through reality, but ultimately
remain incomprehensible. She also questions what the role of experience is in
acquiring knowledge, understanding, and performing the life of another. Julia
misses the experience of meeting Fauna in person, but she gains secondhand
experience through meeting with her children, reading memoirs, and visiting
her old haunts. Experience as an actor, though, discredits her in the eyes of
Santos, who calls her an impostor and questions her motives for wanting to
represent the life of his mother. Paula also questions the value of experience
as it is embodied or disembodied. Throughout the play, Julia strives to embody
the experience of Fauna. At another moment, she talks about motherhood and
confesses that she wishes maternity were a disembodied experience: “¿Por
qué una mujer no puede tener un hijo lejos de su cuerpo?” (43). Knowledge
is equally mutable and unreliable in this play. Ironically, although José Luis
insists they are making a fictional film, he is upset when he is forced to admit
that his historical knowledge of Fauna is uncertain; throughout the play it is
often contradicted by new information presented by her children. At one point,
Santos tells Julia that Fauna made up the story of the amnesiac encounter
with her husband. And toward the end of the play, José Luis tells Santos that
Julia made up the whole story of Fauna. In the end, there is no concrete and
consensual knowledge of Fauna, no certainty that she even existed beyond
the changing accounts and multiple reenactments of her life of the four indi-
viduals who are brought together because of an idea of her.
To summarize thus far, Paula’s explorations of truth, acting and non-
acting, fiction and non-fiction, and biography can all be considered as attempts
at questioning what is real. I should reiterate that these explorations do not
intend to break down the fourth wall; rather, they reveal the ways in which
the discourse of the real can be manipulated to legitimize certain perspec-
tives, to unsettle others, to seduce the audience through the construction of
intimacy, and to call into question what is at stake when the real is invoked. In
the play, episodes depicting flashes of sublime, traumatic, and uncanny truth
suggest that what is real is ineffable, resistant to symbolic assimilation, and
simply “impossible,” according to Lacan. But, in addition to being considered
flashes of truth, through her playful take on what constitutes acting and non-
acting, Paula poses the real as something that is often imperceptible, illusory,
or mistaken for fiction. And through a near fetishization of the biographical
and identification between Julia and Fauna, the real becomes equated with a
sense of personal closeness and the near doubling that takes place between
character and fictional figure.
Fauno
Perhaps the most important question in the play is how these multiple
approaches to the real relate to gender and the fact that the four characters are
SPRING 2017 81
debating over how to represent Fauna, a figure who over the course of her life
becomes Fauno. Paula herself affirms that what most inspired her to write the
play was the question of gender: “La pregunta sobre el lugar de la mujer o so-
bre qué es femenino y masculino me convoca especialmente” (Rabaini). Paula
cites the influence of the Spanish writer Concepción Arenal and the Argentine
filmmaker María Luisa Bemberg on early conceptualizations of Fauna. Ad-
ditional influences include Claude Cahun, Dorothea Lange, Katherine Anne
Porter, Carson McCullers, and Flora Tristan (Halfon). In an interview Paula
states that it is impossible to conflate the feminisms of these women, who
lived in different times under dramatically different circumstances. For some,
Paula contends, feminism was a political act, for others a mode of survival
(Halfon). Paula separates herself from these existing versions of feminism
to focus on what most interests her: “[P]ensar acerca de lo femenino que
puede haber, tanto en un hombre como en una mujer. En lo femenino y en
lo masculino, habite donde habite” (Halfon). Of course, Paula is articulating
herself from a very specific context as well, one that has recently been shaped
by the pioneering laws passed in Argentina to legalize gay marriage (2010)
and protect gender-identity rights (2012). And in 2015, two years after the
play’s premiere, collective denunciation of violence against women took form
in the founding of the NiUnaMenos movement and the spectacular march
that took place in Buenos Aires and in cities across Latin America on June 3,
2015. By de-linking femininity and masculinity from biological definitions
of female and male, Paula’s play showcases the performativity of gender,
famously described by Judith Butler, within the framework of these rapidly
changing legal paradigms of gender identity.
Throughout the play, gender is performative, changing, unfixed, and
impossible to discern as belonging to fiction or reality. This is most clear in
Julia’s recollection of seeing Fauna for the first time: “Y arriba del caballo,
que era como un efigie, este ser, esta persona, de sombrero, recia, bella o bello,
un ser hermoso, imponente, hierático. . .” (23). The person might be male
or female, or both, but gender identity is secondary to the fact that in Julia’s
eyes Fauna is first and foremost a “beautiful, impressive being.” For Julia,
seeing Fauna for the first time constitutes a fantasy that both defies gender
categorization and her own sense of reality. As Butler writes, “The critical
promise of fantasy, when and where it exists, is to challenge the contingent
limits of what will and will not be called reality. Fantasy is what allows us to
imagine ourselves and others otherwise; it establishes the possible in excess
of the real; it points elsewhere, and when it is embodied, it brings elsewhere
home” (29). Fauna’s character exemplifies this element of fantasy. He/she

emerges on horseback from the lush, green backdrop to produce a flash of
truth that disrupts reality and forces Julia to imagine possible identities that
are not contingent on the ability to locate gender as either male or female.
In defying gender norms, Fauna provides the fantasy of a new gender in
which the masculine and feminine are blended, reconfigured in new combi-
nations, and made indistinguishable in the form of a “beautiful, impressive”
being. Throughout the play, Paula offers other examples relating to parent-
age and love that reinforce the possibility of re-envisioning gender in non-
heteronormative ways. In one scene, Julia expresses frustration at limitations
imposed by stereotypes of femininity: “¿Qué dice que soy una mujer, qué
me hace comportarme así, con tanta determinación? ¿Por qué esa manía de
saber y entender, todo el tiempo, qué es qué, quién hace a quién? No puedo
más responder a esta construcción de la debilidad” (44). And she concludes
by stating, “Quisiera poder ser el padre de mis hijos,” to which Santos re-
sponds, “Fauna fue un padre para nosotros” (44). Through Julia’s desire to
be a father, and Santos’ identification of his mother as a father figure, both
characters separate fatherhood from the male gender and in doing so multiply
the possibilities of gender (dis)identification and parentage. Immediately
after Julia proclaims her desire to be a father to her children, she asks José
Luis if he will play the role of Fauno in rehearsing a scene in which Ramón
professes his love to him. After the scene, Julia tells José Luis that his ver-
sion of Fauno is more feminine than her own (45). José Luis (a male actor)
thus rehearses the role of a woman dressed as a man, and his interpretation
is deemed more feminine than Julia’s (a female actor). Through introducing
multiple role-playing scenarios, and blurring the lines between acting and
non-acting, at times Paula’s play undermines normative gender roles by
subsuming them under the multi-layered reflexivity of the play and show-
ing that these normative roles constitute nothing other than performances as
well. As Butler reminds us, “When one performance of gender is considered
authentic, and another fake, then we can conclude that a certain ontology of
gender is conditioning these judgments, an ontology (an account of what
gender is) that is also put into crisis by the performance of gender in such a
way that these judgments are undermined or become impossible to make”
(214). Paula’s play successfully rejects the notion of an authentic or real
gender and instead, I would argue, responds to Butler’s question, “What if
new forms of gender are possible?” (31). Paula achieves this by introducing
women who aspire to be fathers, men who are more feminine than women,
SPRING 2017 83
women who make good fathers, and figures, such as Fauna, who eschew
conventional gender categorization.
One of the most effective strategies Paula employs to undermine gender
norms in Fauna is cross-dressing. As Laurence Senelick observes, “Dress-
ing and undressing is now the common stage exercise to demonstrate gender
construction” (492). In contemporary Argentine theatre, two classic precursor
plays in which actors cross-dress are La Nona, by Roberto Cossa, and Y a
otra cosa mariposa, by Susana Torres Molina. Premiered in 1978 and 1982,
respectively, these plays use cross-dressing as a means of addressing self-
censorship and the social construction of gender under dictatorship.6 While
current Western attitudes may often hold cross-dressing as a liberating form
of expression and a way to disassociate biological sex from gender, histori-
cally cross-dressing has also provided individuals with disguises and modes
of self-preservation and survival under repressive conditions. In Paula’s
play, although Fauna remains offstage, we learn from the other characters
that her transformation into Fauno involved her dressing as a man in order
to gain access to the Circle of Poets meetings. Paula distinguishes between
the different kinds of gender performances taking place in the play, as she
carefully juxtaposes Fauna’s historical experience of cross-dressing as a mode
of access to the male-dominated cultural circles with Julia’s contemporary
cross-dressing as Fauno as a mode of exploration of identity, love, and gender
performativity itself.
Early on in the play, Julia begins dressing in Fauno’s clothes, making her
embodiment of Fauno that much more powerful and her gender identity that
much more complex. When actors onstage act another gender through cross-
dressing, they participate in multiplying registers of performance. Senelick
states that these actors “indulge not in gender-crossing but in gender-mixing,
and offer a polymorphism more desirable than attainable” (10). This desir-
able polymorphism once again reminds us of Butler’s idea of fantasy and the
possibility of envisioning other forms of gender. Julia’s polymorphic gender
mixing allows her to participate in the fantasy of her own gender identity.
Not only does she take charge of her own gender expression, she also shows
concern regarding how Fauna’s gender will be represented in the film. She
disagrees with José Luis over the point of departure in telling the life story
of Fauna and feels strongly that it would be better to begin with Fauna as
Fauno, when he is already participating in the Circle of Poets, because Julia
believes that beginning the film with Fauna, in one of her weakest moments,
would not do Fauno justice (37). In establishing the point of departure as the
moment in which Fauna becomes Fauno, Julia advocates against upholding

the notion of a “real” or “original” underlying identity, and this is important,
because as Selenick observes, “The problem with the masquerade approach to
gender is that its distinction between the real and false is almost Manichaean
(or perhaps Platonic, in its implication that the real is better, more authentic,
than the assumed)” (5). In fact, Julia maintains that the identity Fauna as-
sumes later in her life as Fauno is in some ways more real because it is the
identity that Fauno chose. Whether through cross-dressing or choosing a
new starting point for the articulation of a life, Paula’s play creates a space
for imagining new approaches to gender that challenge historical categories
considered more real or authentic.
Throughout this article I have discussed the ways in which Paula explores
the real: as an ephemeral flash of ineffable truth; as a strategy belonging to
both fiction and non-fiction; as a sensation constructed through biographical
intimacy; and as a normative category, against which characters in Paula’s
play enact the fantasy of gender. Once again, to quote Butler, “If gender is
performative, then it follows that the reality of gender is itself produced as
an effect of the performance. Although there are norms that govern what
will and will not be real, and what will and will not be intelligible, they are
called into question and reiterated at the moment in which performativity
begins in citational practice” (218). Imagining new forms of gender onstage
Photo: Sebastián Arpesella

SPRING 2017 85
(performativity in its most reflexive sense) rehearses the mechanism for trans-
forming fantasy into something real or normative. And this transformation
is complicated because of the double meaning of the norm as inclusive and
potentially protective, on the one hand, and coercive and “normalizing” on
the other (206). What Paula’s play does compellingly is propose a nuanced
exploration of what it means to desire to capture the real through artistic
expression. While the boom in the real across genres and disciplines has pro-
vided artists and critics with a new paradigm for approaching discourses of
truth, fiction, and performance, Paula’s play—and specifically her treatment
of gender—reminds us to be alert to the possibility that the allure of the real
might also encompass a hidden desire for the normative.
American University
Notes
1
Argentine theater director Vivi Tellas introduced the concept of biodrama in Argentina —the
staging of the real lives of individuals— and has made it one of the most exciting dramatic interventions
in contemporary Argentine theatre.
2
The company El Silencio is composed of four longstanding members —Pilar Gamboa, Esteban
Bigliardi, Susana Pampin, and Esteban Lamothe— and the recently incorporated Rafael Ferro, who joined
the company for Fauna.
3
Indeed, in addition to her work as playwright, Paula has acted in films by some of Argentina’s
most talented up-and-coming filmmakers, including La punta del diablo (2006) by Marcelo Paván; Res-
friada (2008) by Gonzalo Castro; El hombre robado (2007), Todos mienten (2009), Viola (2012), and La
Princesa de Francia (2014) by Matías Piñeiro, and El Estudiante (2011) by Santiago Mitre. She has also
written three novels, ¿Vos me querés a mí? (2005), Agosto (2009), Acá todavía (2016), as well as several
essays.
4
Just a handful of recent examples of works that highlight this blending of film and theatre modes
include Lisandro Alonso’s Fantasma (2006), José Glusman’s Final de obra (2006), Federico León’s Yo en
el futuro (2009), Matías Piñeiro’s Viola (2012) and La Princesa de Francia (2014), Alejo Moguillansky’s
El loro y el cisne (2013), and Mariano Pensotti’s Cineastas (2013).
5
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the sublime as “affecting the mind with a sense of over-
whelming grandeur or irresistible power; calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotion, by
reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur.”
6
See Jean Graham-Jones’s discussion of cross-dressing and gender construction under dictatorship
in “Myths, Masks, and Machismo.”
Work Cited
Arfuch, Leonor. El espacio biográfico: Dilemas de la subjetividad contemporánea.

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posible” y post-neoliberalismo.” Latin American Theatre Review, vol. 45, no.
1, 2011, pp. 45-73.
Graham-Jones, Jean. “Myths, Masks, and Machismo: Un trabajo fabuloso by Ricardo
Halac and . . .Y a otra cosa mariposa by Susana Torres Molina.” Gestos, no.
20, 1995, pp. 91-106.
Halfon, Mercedes. “Cerca del corazón salvaje.” Radar. Página 12. 26 May 2013.
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Merrill, Barbara, and Linden West. Using Biographical Methods in Social Research.
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Page, Joanna. “Beyond Reflexivity: Acting and Experience in Contemporary Ar-
gentine and Brazilian Cinema.” New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema: Reality
Effects, edited by Jens Andermann and Alvaro Fernández-Bravo, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013. 73-87.
Paula, Romina. Fauna, El tiempo todo entero, Algo de ruido hace. Entropía, 2013,
pp. 10-59.
Rabaini, Agustina “La elegida del teatro off.” Sophia. 8 Sep. 2013. Accessed 1 Aug.
2014.
Renov, Michael. The Subject of Documentary. U Minnesota P, 2004.
Rilke, Rainer M., and Edward A. Snow. New Poems. North Point Press, 2001.
Senelick, Laurence. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag, and Theatre. Routledge, 2000.
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SPRING 2017 87
Matías Piñeiro’s Viola and the Resonant Drift of Love
Constanza Ceresa1
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
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price
Even in a minute. So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical
.
—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1
With this brief monologue, Orsino, the Duke of Iliria, opens Twelfth
Night, the Shakespearean comedy that is being rehearsed by a group of fe-
male performers in Matías Piñeiro’s film Viola (2012). Although the fragment
quoted above does not appear in the film, it aptly expresses how the discor-
dant “spirit of love” resists categorization into a single meaning. The spirit
of love emerges as a synesthetic “sweet sound” that “breathes upon a bank
of violets,” later turning into an intolerable noise that falls “into abatement
and low price.” Viola articulates the precarious shapes of “fancy” through the
entanglement of different discourses, genres, and subjects, allowing theatre,
literature, music, design, maps, text messages, emails, and pirated films to
intersect in a vibrant dialogue.
It is now firmly accepted that one of the characteristics of contemporary
aesthetic production pertains to the loss of boundaries between disciplines
and artistic genres. As Florencia Garramuño states: “Contemporary aesthetics’
transformations propitiate modes of organization of the sensible that put into
crisis ideas of belongingness, specificity and autonomy” (245). Such porosity
of language not only questions automatized categorization of genres (how a
form responds to an identity), but also strengthens new forms of interaction
between fiction and reality, art and spectator. By means of technical and nar-
rative operations, Viola positions itself in that interstice in order to create an
indiscernible zone where gender identities and meanings are dissolved. In
this article, I will first examine how the tension between cinema and theatre
that lies at the heart of the film breaks boundaries between different forms
of perception. Second, I will explore in what way the baroque imaginary un-
leashed by the Shakespearean play contributes to blurring the limits between
reality and artifice. Finally, I will explore how the performative2 repetition
of texts and gestures creates an unstable affective network in which bodies,
sounds, and gazes contaminate characters’ everyday lives. I will conclude
that Viola shows that the resonance of love, as a social and affective force,
circulates beyond what is visible.
Cinema and Theatre in Tension

Matías Piñeiro (1982, Buenos Aires) is a graduate of the Universidad
del Cine in Buenos Aires, currently living in New York. He has made five
films to date: El hombre robado (2007), Todos mienten (2009), Rosalinda
(2011), Viola (2012), and La princesa de Francia (2014), the last of which
was released at the Lorcano Film Festival. The first two films engage with
the work of 19th-century Argentine writer and statesman Domingo Faustino
Sarmiento,3 while Rosalinda, Viola, and La princesa de Francia4 are part of
a series of films that explore the feminine world in William Shakespeare’s
comedies. Viola was released in September 2012 at the Toronto International
Film Festival and shown at the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine
Independiente (BAFICI) in 2013, where María Villar, Agustina Muñoz, Elisa
Carricajo, and Romina Paula shared the award for best female performer.
As in other Piñeiro films, a literary text (in this case the rehearsal of a scene
from a Shakespeare comedy) becomes the catalyst for a series of unexpected
connections. The film’s plot is apparently simple. The title character delivers
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pirated DVDs throughout the Buenos Aires as part of her boyfriend’s video
business. Along the way she joins up with a group of actresses who are per-
forming in an all-female production of Shakespeare’s classic. As film critic
Frank Scheck explains:
Within this mode, characters shift from everyday conversation to
thick Shakespearean verse, often within the same scene, and with
whiplash speed. Ostensibly justified as textual rehearsal bleeding over
into real life, the brilliance of this “open workshop” conceit is that it
paradoxically shifts the Bard’s perennial themes of love, identity and
destiny into broader dialogue with 21st century relationship culture.
There are few critical articles on Piñeiro’s filmography and even fewer
on Viola. The existing ones are available in online cinema magazines and are
mostly written by English-speaking film critics, a testimony to the existence
of an already captive New York audience for Piñeiro’s work. Although Piñeiro
is known and appreciated within the local Argentinean film network, his films
differ greatly from the realist style of the so-called New Argentine Cinema,
in which the use of non-professional actors and documentary techniques are
influenced by the low-budget strategies pioneered by Italian Neorealism.5
Piñeiro’s cinematic aesthetic is more akin to his contemporaries Mariano
Llinás and Alejo Moguillansky, with whom he shares common experimen-
tal methods, actors, and technicians, as well as friendships, so much so that
Moguillansky was the film editor of Rosalinda and Viola.6 In a relatively
recent interview with The New York Times, Piñeiro declares in relation to
the New Argentine Cinema: “I enjoy cinema much more in terms of artifice
and composition rather than the obsessive naturalism that sometimes I think
those films fall into” (Dargis and Scott). In his review of Viola, film critic
Dennis Lim presents a similar view:
If many recent art films have made prominent use of non-actors,
typically cast as some version of themselves, Piñeiro’s beguiling,
hyperverbal movies revel in the transportive potential—and sheer
pleasure—of actors acting. Instead of rooting stories in the soil of the
real, they emphasize the alchemical properties of fiction, the power
of the written and spoken word to warp the world and generate their
own reality.
The fact that Piñeiro’s film was a low-budget production is not related to the
political aim of depicting a precarious world or addressing class struggle, as
it is the case with many Argentine films of the period. On the contrary, as film
critic Quintín (pen name of Eduardo Antín) claims, Piñeiro’s characters are
usually detached from the rest of society. They are of similar age and belong
to a middle-class artistic milieu devoted to leading some kind of bohemian
life, a feature that has led some film critics to relate Piñeiro’s films to the
contemporary subgenre mumblecore, low-budget films made by young people
about (more or less) their own lives (“Role Models”). In Quintín’s opinion, if
Piñeiro’s films do have a political component, it is most likely expressed by
the fact that his characters live according to their desires; this freedom from
state constraints stands “as an attempt to avoid the increasingly authoritarian
atmosphere of the Kirchner years by suppressing all links to the omnipres-
ent political reality.” In such an independent world, Quintín continues, “[T]
here is no daily life, because daily life is connected to family, to politics, to
social issues, to regular jobs.” In other words, Piñeiro’s characters are free
because of their micropractices of dissent and their disengagement from po-
litical reality, contrary to the Kirchnerist youth, who are committed to active
militancy.7 However, I believe there is something more powerful in Piñeiro’s
proposal that does not necessarily happen in the referential realm. I adhere
to film scholar Laura Podalsky’s idea that “sensorial dynamics” at play in
regional cinema of the last decade “solicit particular emotional responses
and/or stimulate more diffuse, affective reactions from the spectator” (7). In
her opinion, such affective engagement might unsettle “hardened oppositions
between mind/body, reason/emotion, and masculine/feminine” (9). In Viola,
the appropriation of heterogeneous cultural forms leads to an exploration of
this sensorial dynamic at different levels.
Within the crossover of disciplines and languages, theatre occupies an
important place in Piñeiro’s films. In the series based on Shakespeare’s com-
edies, there is always a group of female performers rehearsing and repeating
lines from a particular scene that is being filmed by an observant camera.
The encounter of two different dramatic languages disrupts the spectator’s
habits shaped by the conventions specific to each genre, affecting the way
reality is perceived through time and space. At first sight, it looks as if Viola
is playing with the limits of theatrical format through the use of cinematic
medium. In her article “Cinema and Theatre,” Susan Sontag argues that the
rise of cinema was conceived as the emancipation from theatrical artificiality:
The history of cinema is often treated as the history of its emancipa-
tion from theatrical models. First of all from theatrical “frontality”
(the unmoving camera reproducing the situation of the spectator of
a play fixed in his seat), then from theatrical acting (gestures need-
lessly stylized, exaggerated-needlessly, because now the actor could
SPRING 2017 91
be seen “close up”), then from theatrical furnishings (unnecessary

“distancing” of the audience’s emotions, disregarding the opportunity
to immerse the audience in reality). (24)
This tension between theatrical language and cinematic language can be
seen throughout the film, opening indiscernible zones of meaning. In one
of the first scenes of the film, the camera records the staging of a scene of
the play Twelfth Night in a small local theater. One character, Cecilia, plays
the role of a woman (Viola) disguised as a man (Bassanio), while another,
Sabrina, plays the role of Olivia, who wears a black lace veil over her face.8
In this scene, Bassanio, Orsino’s page, has been sent to declare the duke’s
love to Olivia. For this mission, he has learned a text, remarking “[M]e costó
mucho trabajo aprenderlo y es muy poético,” to which Olivia replies: “[R]
azón de más para que sea fingido, te pido que te lo guardes.” The dramatic
importance of words and the effect of pictorial chiaroscuro created by the
stage lighting presents theatricality as an art that creates fake compositions
of artificial dialogues and movements.
Yet while the scene emphasizes the feature of theatre acting, the filmic
medium also challenges theatrical frontality. The camera’s movement, with
its intrusive interaction and various perspectives, undermines the fundamental
pact of theatre as an event during which the spectator is fixed in her seat and
therefore cannot change her angle of vision. The lens of the camera, which
continually shifts in distance and direction, creates an illusion of permanent
motion (Sontag 27). The insistent close-ups and the optic effect of faces go-
ing in and out of focus tend to dissociate the scene from the whole plot by
emphasizing textures, luminosity, and color. Indeed, the voyeuristic camera
eye adopts different perspectives, beginning with Agustín (the play´s director
and Sabrina’s ex-boyfriend), who is watching from the balcony. From this
elevated viewpoint, Sabrina’s face appears at the forefront of the frame, but
not for long, because the camera soon takes up the viewpoint of a different
young man (Gerónimo, Viola’s boyfriend). He is staring at Cecilia, who be-
comes the focus of the next close-up. In this way, the spectator seems to be
located in the middle of an intersection of people looking at each other with
varying degrees of intensity. The decentered position of the viewer creates a
kaleidoscopic effect that challenges the possibility of representing an objec-
tive reality. Such an intertwining of looks might recall the baroque image
of Diego Velázquez’s painting Las meninas, with the exception that rather
than a relation of power, what is displayed in this case is an orgy of gazes in
which everything and everyone is eroticized. On the one hand, these visual
strategies hint at something else going on between the camera and those
eyes, something that cannot be recorded but that nevertheless interferes in the
composition of the frame. On the other hand, they make visible the artificial
language of cinematic medium.
In fact, in Sontag’s opinion, the view that movies are regarded as advanc-
ing from theatrical stasis to cinematic fluidity, from theatrical artificiality to
cinematic naturalness and immediacy, is far too simple: “[I]t´s tempting to
draw a crude boundary. Theatre deploys artifice while cinema is committed
to reality [...] Cinema, at once high art and popular art, is cast as the art of
the authentic. Theatre, by contrast, means dressing up, pretense, lies” (24,
26). Images registered by the camera are in fact arbitrary because they are a
selection of the whole. In other words, cinema is not only an art but also a
medium, a mechanical reproduction of reality that creates illusions, a time
machine that constructs narration through a visual grammar made of associa-
tive and disjunctive rhythms. For Sontag, the distinctive unit of films is not
the image but the principle of connection between shots, the arrangement of
screen images and sounds, which unlike theatre is confined to a discontinuous
use of space that creates a sense of disorientation (29).
Regarding this debate and in dialogue with Sontag, Philippa Page claims
that cinema is the successor and rival of theatre, just as theatre is the successor,
rival, and reviver of cinema. Drawing on performance studies, Page decon-
structs the notion of genre as a fixed category and defines it as “a contingent
construct that attempts to ensure a sense of agency that is based at the very
least on the illusion of a stable identity and subjectivity that can underpin
legitimate political engagement” (15). In Viola, theatrical and cinematic
languages are brought into such tension that they collapse into each other’s
boundaries. The film does not aim to confront both languages but to create a
playful and hybrid form of representation that will go beyond a self-reflexive
practice to become a performance of daily affective alliances.
All the World’s a Stage

Whether it is expressed through theatre or film, language’s artificiality
is constantly exaggerated in Viola, showing the illusory character of reality,
identity, and meaning. Reality and fiction are merged to the point of becom-
ing indistinguishable.9 In one of the first scenes, the actresses appear in the
intimacy of a dressing room talking about how and when to end a relation-
ship, a timely topic given that Sabrina has just broken up with her boyfriend.
As they talk, they look in the mirror, put on makeup and fake eyelashes, and
SPRING 2017 93
style their hair as if performing femininity. An intrusive camera follows the

situation, closing in on faces, eyes, and mouths as if it were eavesdropping
on a private conversation, coming closer to a sympathetic female gaze rather
than a male gaze. With such excessive closeness, the depth field becomes
extremely short and impedes proper focus. Moreover, when the camera posi-
tions itself behind the mirror, it creates the impression that the girls looking
at themselves are in fact staring straight at the audience. There is something
artificial about the conversation as the girls show themselves insensitive
to the pains of love. After being interrogated by her friends about her now
ex-boyfriend, Sabrina decides to take his phone call, declaring poetically,
“Ahora como puedo y quiero, yo decido. Así que ahora decido atenderlo.”
At the end of the scene and following Sabrina’s departures, the girls conspire
to test her love—or lack of it—for her ex-boyfriend through the following
ploy. Cecilia is to seduce Sabrina during rehearsals, specifically during the
scene the audience has already seen rehearsed at the beginning of the film
where Cecilia plays Bassanio, a man declaring his love to Olivia, played by
Sabrina. Their language changes as they plot together and appropriate lines
from other Shakespearean plays in their dialogue. Thus, although the play
is over, the use of poetic language and artificial gestures make the actresses
look as if they were constantly rehearsing for a bigger and endless play,
emphasizing the baroque topic of theatrum mundi.
Photo: Alessio Rigo de Righi

The performative appropriation of an Elizabethan imaginary in the urban

context of twenty-first century Buenos Aires involves a dialogic imagination
in which, according to Mikhail Bakhtin, “languages of various epochs and
periods of socio-ideological life cohabit with one another” (Dialogic 291):
The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes one’s “own”
only when the speaker populates it with his own intentions, his own
accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic
and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the
word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language, [...] but
rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts,
serving other people’s intentions; it is from there that one must take
the word, and make it one’s own. (294)
For Bakhtin, there is neither a first nor a last word, and there are no limits to
the dialogic context. This is why dialogic expression is always incomplete;
meaning is never closed and always oriented towards the future (Speech
Genres 170). In Piñeiro’s film, Shakespeare’s dramatic lines are uttered with
different intentions according to the context. These words populate charac-
ters’ mouths not only during the staging of the play, but also in everyday life
speech, where they acquire new meanings. Yet Viola not only appropriates
Shakespeare’s “words,” but also his baroque aesthetic, which emphasizes
the possibility of blurring the boundaries between being/seeming and reality/
fiction. In Twelfth Night, deception and conspiracy are common instruments
of revenge and humiliation. For these purposes it displays a game of appear-
ances where characters usually impersonate others: A young aristocratic-born
woman named Viola pretends to be a man in order to conquer Orsino’s heart;
the fool pretends to be a priest; a sister and brother are taken for the same
person, the sane for the insane, and the coward for the brave. Similarly, in
Viola, love conspiracies, games of mirrors, oneiric passages, and the play
within the play (and in this case also the play within the film) are all com-
monplace. Such baroque mechanisms contribute to mobilizing meaning and
decentering the figure of the subject—who could have served to anchor the
action—in order to show that perhaps, as is the case in Hamlet, there is more
truth in artifice than in what is perceived as real.
According to J. Hoberman, there is also a crossover between Shake-
speare’s character Viola and Piñeiro’s Viola, as the latter is a character “who
is invited to replace one of the actresses in Twelfth Night and who contrib-
utes to the pervasive theme of copying and doubling by acting as a courier
for her boyfriend in the business of duping and distributing bootleg DVDs”
SPRING 2017 95
(“The DVDs.”) While Shakespeare’s Viola (in the role of Bassanio) is the
messenger of Duke Orsino’s declaration of love, Piñeiro’s Viola delivers
films that are ultimately representations and fantasies that people want to
consume. But there are other things that circulate in the transaction, like
money and love. Although it is true that both Violas are somehow emissar-
ies10, in Piñeiro’s film, Viola is moved by her own desires, showing no clear
direction in her decisions. She seems to be attracted to almost any person
who crosses her daily circuit, male or female. For example, in one scene she
is lying on the bed of one of her friends/customers, looking at her mobile.
Or later, when one of the customers asks her, sounding a little upset, whether
she has received his emails and invites her to the local bar. Without reply-
ing, Viola takes the money and keeps moving. It seems that both love and
money function as coins of exchange in Viola. But this notion of love is not
connected to a sentimental feeling of identification, but one of connection.
In fact, as Melissa Gregg claims, it is disassociated from the conventions of
middle-class propriety, where property and intimacy are linked together in a
mutually beneficial pact (397). It seems that what connects bodies in Viola is
not the love for sameness, but a power that generates social bonds and orga-
nizes social and intimate relations. In fact, in Viola men and women circulate
along with goods and words, creating precarious relationships. Somehow the
indiscernibility of identities and genres makes perceptible the force of love
that moves in between stable forms as a “motor of both transformation and
duration or continuity” (Hardt 676).
Another baroque staple borrowed by Piñeiro in Viola is verbosity. During
the film, characters are constantly talking, rehearsing, texting, calling, and
ringing doorbells. There is an intense exchange of ideas, tips, and gazes that
shows an intense human connection. Usually, characters tend to go around
and around to say something. This verbosity seems to detach from the laconic
characters who have prevailed in New Argentine Cinema, as in the films of
Adriano Caetano, Lisandro Alonso, Lucrecia Martel, and Martín Rejtman,
among others. In Viola, on the contrary, there are few scenes without dialogue.
Sometimes the noise comes from the city itself, as for example when Viola
cycles through different areas of Buenos Aires (in some of the few exterior
shots of the film). In these long tracking shots, Viola merges with the traf-
fic to the point of being swallowed up by the size of the highways and the
vociferous city, like a soundtrack to contemporary urban life in which there
is no space for either silence or repose.
Photo: Alessio Rigo de Righi
The dialogic nature of the film invites the spectator to think about con-
temporary human affairs from a historical perspective, as if somehow, Shake-
speare’s baroque plays can tell us a lot about love in Buenos Aires. Similarly,
Viola’s affairs are able to re-enact the past through the anachronistic repetition
of the same words and gestures in the present. It is the encounter of different
epochs that makes Piñeiro´s film a contemporary work, establishing in Gior-
gio Agamben´s terms, “a singular relationship with one’s own time, which
adheres to it and, at the same time, keeps a distance from it. More precisely,
it is that relationship with time that adheres to it, through a disjunction and
an anachronism” (41). It is in fact a way of thought, where all the times are
intertwined in the present, and with it their own forms of representation.
Piñeiro combines these layers of time by means of performative appropria-
tion and repetition, bringing to the surface an affective force that circulates
in between representational forms and reverberates at the edge of vision.
I Am All Ears
According to Jonathan Sterne, vision usually offers perspective, distance,
objectivity, and primarily a spatial sense (9). Unlike the intellectual dimen-
sion of vision, listening is about affect because it tends towards subjectivity;
it places you inside an event, establishing an involved physical engagement
with the situation (9). Piñeiro explores that affective dimension through sound
SPRING 2017 97
design: “The idea of the world as being something beyond what is seen is
what I’m looking to express. I think besides editing, sound design can be a
very economical way of communicating that idea” (Dargis and Scott). As
shown earlier, the unsettling use of the camera and excessive use of close-
ups produce a sense of disorientation in the viewer. At the same time, the
film´s sound and soundscape exceed their diegetic function and consequently
their referential content, becoming an autonomous sound image that asks the
spectator to be all ears.11
The repetition of Shakespeare’s lines plays an important role, transform-
ing sound into pure materiality, through which the flow of love moves and
circulates between bodies and words. The film starts with a very brief scene
backstage in which Sabrina breaks up with her boyfriend by phone just before
appearing on stage. She replies: “Escucháte, decí: Sabrina no me quiere. Dale
decílo, dale decílo[…] Otra vez, otra, otra, otra[..,]” up to seven times. Later in
the film, there is a remarkable scene in which Cecilia tries to seduce Sabrina
during the rehearsal, as planned at the beginning of the film. The scene, set
in Sabrina’s house, lasts more than eight minutes. Apart from Sabrina’s black
veil and the red plaid shirt worn by Cecilia, there are no special costumes
involved. The rehearsal opens abruptly and full lines are repeated six times,
word by word, usually with some variations triggered by some mistake made
by one of the protagonists. In this long tracking shot, the camera becomes an
active voyeur that follows every move and look, playing with seductive close-
ups and sometimes taking some distance. Verbal language, that is, Bassanio’s
declaration of love to Olivia, contaminates body language and unleashes an
erotic choreography between Cecilia and Sabrina. The spectator establishes
a sensorial engagement with the scene and lives through an embodied experi-
ence of the situation. While the looping of lines is taking place, the sounds of
the doorbell, the telephone, and knocking on the front door (Viola is outside
trying to deliver DVDs to Olivia) stress the presence of an “out of field”
that creates a sense of urgency. It is as if these multiple elements, allegedly
marginal to the main scene of the rehearsal, were contributing to bring about
the kiss that Cecilia eventually manages to give Sabrina.
The loop, the repetition of almost identical sequences with some varia-
tions, is an essential part of the sound phenomenon. It expresses pulsation,
speed, color, and vibration, all of which produce a psychoacoustic effect
contrary to the progressive development of melody. Consequently, the sound
of origin is deformed and taken out of context, losing its original meaning.
The mechanical repetition of those artificial lines by the female performers
creates a resonant plane, inviting us, as Jean Luc-Nancy claims, to be all ears
in order to listen to the reverberation of the unsaid:
To be listening is always to be on the edge of meaning, or in an edgy
meaning of extremity, and as if the sound were precisely nothing
else than this edge, this fringe, this margin—at least the sound that is
musically listened to, that is gathered and scrutinized for itself, not,
however, as an acoustic phenomenon (or not merely as one) but as a
resonant meaning, a meaning whose sense is supposed to be found
in resonance, and only in resonance. (7)
As a sound effect, repetition places the spectator between outside and inside,
fiction and reality, which is also the edge of meaning. By losing the referential
function, the poetic function of the text rehearsed gains prominence, so that
rhythm, cadence, and height become the mobile material of the endless flow
of desire. In that interstitial zone, the passive hearing of words would be in-
sufficient, because only active listening can perceive the resonance of love.
In this way, Viola acquires layers that endow every word and every image
with an affective force that escapes rational understanding.
There are two “plays” at stake in the rehearsal scene: One is that of Bas-
sanio repeating a love text to Olivia and the other is that of Cecilia trying to
trap Sabrina in her seductive net. Given that the same body is used by the
character in the film and the character in the play, “the (brilliant) seduction
scenes in both plays are also seduction scenes in the film” (Quintín). Ac-
cording to Lim:
[T]his mischievous start-stop rehearsal between Cecilia and
Sabrina—looping their lines into an incantatory mantra,
turning words into weapons and traps of seduction, merging
their on- and offstage selves—generates both erotic tension
and ontological confusion.
Such a queer twist undermines the idea of a fixed, essential, and natural no-
tion of gender identity. The theatrical seductive game between Cecilia and
Sabrina conveys instead a performative enactment of gender which, in Judith
Butler’s terms, happens at the level of the body: “If the inner truth of gen-
der is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed
on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor
false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and
stable identity” (174). Similarly, in Viola, characters appear divested of inner
life and identity, becoming a point of intersection in the drifting weave of
desire. Desire connects bodies, and under its lure every subject becomes an
SPRING 2017 99
interchangeable empty container. In this sense, repetition is a way of involv-

ing the spectator in the precarious web of love that circulates in the scene,
inviting her to listen to what flows among bodies.
But there is another side of the film that relates critically to the concept of
repetition and its effects on everyday relationships. In one scene in the middle
of the film, Viola is waiting outside Agustín’s house for a delivery and runs
into Cecilia, who invites her to wait inside the car. Cecilia is trying to learn
the lines of the epilogue of Twelfth Night from a book, while a contemporary
piece of music plays softly on the radio. They talk about theatre and the dif-
ficulty of learning lines by heart. Within the already claustrophobic space
of the car, the camera moves extremely close to their bodies, as if trapped
in that small space. During the conversation, no reverse shots12 are applied,
with the camera alternating between Viola and Cecilia in close-ups. Soon
after, Viola falls asleep and has a dream. In the dream she is in the car with
Cecilia on the same street, but outside there is a big storm. Suddenly Ruth,
a mutual friend, appears in the street and gets into the car. Also an actress,
Ruth will replace Cecilia in the play in the role of Viola. After declaiming
a piece of the epilogue by heart, Viola is chosen to be the third replacement
for the same role. Such a fortunate situation leads Ruth to question Viola’s
passive attitude towards life and to challenge her to be more proactive in her
life decisions. They come up with a plan for Viola to break the inertia that
plagues her relationship with Gerónimo. The plan is as follows: Viola must
consciously break routines and cease to repeat the same empty daily gestures
of love. For example, if she always kisses Gerónimo when she gets home, then
she should interrupt that habit and wait for his reaction instead. If he kisses
her immediately, the relationship is lost (because he would be automatically
repeating a learned gesture), but if he takes his time and gives her a kiss
without warning, the relationship is saved. Then, almost imperceptibly for the
spectator, Viola wakes up and gets out of the car with Cecilia to meet Agustín.
This constitutes the moment when the film detaches itself from its ver-
bosity, leaving more space for silence. Just like the actresses who are aware
that they are acting in a play, by acting the role of the indifferent girlfriend at
home, Viola becomes self-conscious of every word said, gesture made, and
look given. After receiving a kiss at the right moment, her voice, off camera,
declares that in that particular moment she felt that something true and real
had happened between them; she then comments that her boyfriend Gerónimo
will soon leave her for Cecilia (the actual Viola in Shakespeare’s play). The
film finishes with Viola joining Gerónimo in an improvised musical session
in their non-professional band. Improvisation is the counterpoint to automatic

repetition, and therefore it creates a new sound image through connection
and collaboration. While art is a way of repeating other people’s words with
new intensities, daily life must be a platform for the different within the same.
The spectator becomes aware of the repetitive act and at some point pays
attention to what happens beyond the visual among those forms and bodies.
Conclusion
Piñeiro’s filmography is itself a reiterative aesthetic exploration of how to
move at the edge of meaning. Viola creates a mobile tapestry of love in which
affective flows call for a sensorial experience. Such openness is produced
by erasing the boundaries of both gender and genre, which is accomplished
via the use of diverse mediums of representation (theatre, literature, music,
maps, text messages, phone calls, and the internet), the evidencing of porous
boundaries between being and appearance, the fusion of reality and fiction,
and the romantic entanglement in which subjects become points of intersec-
tion just like the points on the map Viola is constantly consulting in the city.
Piñeiro puts forward a dialogic and queer aesthetic artifact where identities
or genres are not fixed, with the simple aim of finding a moment of “truth” in
contemporary human affairs. Yet, it is a truth that resists being represented,
as it is embedded in pure resonance. It emerges in everyday life through the
repetitive rehearsals of learned cultural and social knowledge. Consequently,
when watching Piñeiro’s films, we need to interrupt the habits and fantasies
that we mechanically repeat to the point that they become naturalized and
listen to the reverberation of love moving at the edges, like a “sweet sound”
that “breathes upon a bank of violets” and later turns into an intolerable noise
that falls “into abatement and low price.” Ultimately, this intoxicating force
does not belong to anyone, as Viola is an endless rehearsal for an opening
night that may never materialize.
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez/ Universidad de Chile
Notes
1
This article is part of my Postdoctoral Project Fondecyt N°3140312 (2014-2016), under the title
“Del realismo a lo real. Un estudio del cine y poesía argentina y chilena contemporáneos.”
2
According to Diana Taylor, “performances function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social
knowledge, memory and a sense of identity through reiterated…‘twice-behaved’ behavior” (3).
SPRING 2017 101
3
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was an important nineteenth-century liberal intellectual and politi-
cian who developed the national education system as part of his presidential mandate. He wrote several
essays, among them Facundo (Civilización y Barbarie) (1845). Piñeiro has declared in several interviews
that he sees in this iconic figure not only a controversial politician, but also a great writer.
4
La princesa de Francia received two important prizes at BAFICI 2014, consolidating a unique
style influenced by Jacques Rivette´s theatrical experiments on screen and by Eric Rohmer´s talkative
characters.
5
Particularly, it is the influence of Roberto Rossellini’s, Vittorio De Sica’s and Luchino Visconti´s
filmographies. The lumpen subject drifting through the Buenos Aires of Pizza, Birra, Faso (Adriano Caetano,
1998), and the exploration of a proletarian world in Mundo Grúa (Pablo Trapero, 1999) are just two examples
of this tendency, which has been catalogued as realist by several film critics. (See Aguilar and Oubiña.)
6
Mariano Llinás is the director of Historias extraordinarias (2008), a film that plays with the
boundaries between literature and cinema, among others. Alejo Moguillansky directed El loro y el cisne
(2013), a film that shows the rehearsal of a contemporary dance piece. Cecilia Sosa analyzes the role of
the body in Moguillansky´s film in this issue.
7
In Argentina’s current literary scene, some writers have shown an open political commitment to
Kirchnerismo, like Sergio Raimondi, Alejandro Rubio, Violeta Kesselman, among many other poets from
the ’90s. However, in the context of film, aside from the work of Benjamin Ávila and Paula de Luque,
there seem to be fewer examples of this brand of militancy.
8
In the original play, the page is called Cesario. Bassanio is a character from The Merchant of
Venice, but it seems that like most of the characters in the film, people are easily replaceable.
9
A similar ambiguous articulation between reality and fiction is found in Lola Arias’ theatrical
work, which is further explored by Jordana Blejmar in this issue.
10
In the case of Twelfth Night, Olivia falls in love with Bassanio (who is actually Viola disguised
as Orsino’s page).
11
Piñeiro’s last film, La princesa de Francia, takes the role of sound and repetition even further, to
the level of the narrative plot. The film is about Víctor, a young theatre director who after a long stay in
Mexico returns to Buenos Aires with the idea of reuniting five girlfriends for a radio drama adaptation of
Shakespeare’s comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost. As in other Piñeiro films, music, literature, theatre, photography,
and painting merge in a hybrid aesthetic artifact. Part of the action happens inside a museum, where the work
Nymphs and Satyr by the French painter William Adolphe Bouguereau is the focus of the characters’ and
spectators’ gazes. The image represents a satyr surrounded by beautiful nymphs, recalling the female cast
that surrounds Víctor, vying for a place in his play and heart. Sound is present in music pieces (Schumann’s
Spring Symphony or the performance of the band), but mainly in the ready-made noises (e.g., the sound of
someone ripping a letter) and in the intonation and cadence of the characters’ voices during the rehearsal of
the radio drama. While radio drama emphasises the importance of sound and voice, repetition works at the
level of the plot. There are three different versions of the same situation in the film, each one with a different
ending. The creation of simultaneous possible worlds is a performative demonstration of the fact that we
can always repeat, but every repetition will be different and will put into play new elements.
12
Reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often
off screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character.
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. What is an Apparatus? And Other Essays. Stanford UP, 2009.
Aguilar, Gonzalo. El nuevo cine argentino. Arcos, 2005.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Texas UP, 1992.
___. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist, translated by Vern W. McGee. Texas UP, 1986.
Beceyro Raúl, Filippelli Rafael, Oubiña David, and Pauls Alan. “Estética del cine,
nuevos realismos, representación.” Punto de vista, vol. 23, no. 67, 2000, pp. 1-9.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge, 1999.
Dargis, M., and A. O. Scott. “20 Directors to Watch.” The New York Times, 5 Sept.
2013. Accessed 12 Dec. 2015.
Garramuño, Florencia. “Forms of Disbelonging in Contemporary Latin American
Aesthetics.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia, vol. 22, no
3, 2013, pp. 245-57.
Gregg, Melissa. “The Break-Up: Hardt and Negri’s Politics of Love.” Journal of
Communication, vol. 35, no. 4, 2011, pp. 395-402. ·
Hardt, Michael. “For Love or Money.” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 26, no. 4, 2011,
pp. 676-82.
Hoberman, J. “The Cinema of Matías Piñeiro: As You Like It.” Blowing Art Info,
12 July 2013. Accessed 1 Dec. 2015.
Lim, Dennis. “Exits and Entrances: on Matías Piñeiro´s Viola.” The Free Library.
Artforum International Magazine, Summer 2013. Accessed 1 Dec. 2015.
Luc-Nancy, Jean. Listening. Translated by Charlotte Mandell, Fordham UP, 2007.
Page, Joanna. Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema. Duke UP,
2009.
Page, Philippa. Politics and Performance in Post-Dictatorship Argentine Film and
Theatre. Tamesis, 2011.
Podalsky, Laura. The Politics of Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Latin American
Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Quintín (Eduardo Antín). “Role Models: The Films of Matías Piñeiro.” Cinema
Scope, vol. 52, 2013. Accessed 1 Dec. 2015.
Robbins, Jonathan. “Interview: Matías Piñeiro.” Film Comment Featured, 23 June
2013. Accessed 20 Nov. 2014.
Scheck, Frank. “Viola: Film Review.” The Hollywood Reporter. 7 Dec. 2012. Ac-
cessed 10 March 2016.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. Accessed 2 December 2014.
Sterne, Jonathan, editor. The Sound Studies Reader. Routledge, 2012.
Sontag, Susan. “Cinema and Theatre.” The Tulane Drama Review, vol. 11, no. 1,
1966, pp. 24-37.
Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the
Americas. Duke UP, 2003.
Viola. Directed by Matías Piñeiro, performances by María Villar, Alessio Rigo de
Righi, and Agustina Muñoz, Cinema Gild, 2012.
SPRING 2017 103
Autofictions of Postwar: Fostering Empathy in Lola Arias’

Minefield/Campo minado
Jordana Blejmar
It has often been claimed that the 1982 Malvinas/Falkland War was
an event without testimonies or images. In her prologue to Juan Travnik’s
powerful photographic portraits of Argentine veterans and island landscapes,
taken between 1994 and 2008, Graciela Speranza writes that, except for those
who were in front of the British troops on the battlefields, “Malvinas es una
guerra sin imágenes ni relatos.” According to Speranza, the only things the
Argentine people remember of the war are a nationalist fervour and a few
laconic official reports accompanied by military marches. In the same vein,
Julieta Vitullo, author of a book about Argentine literary fictions of the war,
writes that “era poco lo que la sociedad sabía —o quería saber— acerca de
los acontecimientos mismos” (13).
Martín Kohan, however, has noted that already in 1982 the book Los
chicos de la guerra by Daniel Kon—which was made into a film by Bebe
Kamin in 1984—offered a number of testimonies of Argentine soldiers about
their experiences in the South Atlantic archipelago (El país 269). Kohan
shows that, unlike the soldiers of World War I who initially returned speech-
less from the battlefields, Argentine soldiers had a lot to say in the aftermath
of the conflict.1 Furthermore, popular magazines such as Gente and Somos
published a large number of war images that not only illustrated reports but
also furnished the lies that formed part of the discourse of the 1976-1983
military dictatorship.
Nevertheless, more than these testimonies and images of the war, what
has perhaps most caught the attention of those who later studied the conflict
are the fictions that surrounded and continue to surround the event: “the rep-
resentations more than the realities,” the “characters more than the protago-
nists” (McGuirk 14), the rumours more than the recollections. Due to their
distant location, semi-deserted and inhospitable landscape, and mysterious

shape—writer Carlos Gamerro likens them to Rorschach stains—the Malvi-
nas/Falkland Islands continue to function as a site around which Argentines’
deepest fears, obsessions, and desires often circulate as well as a blank canvas
that can be filled with any imaginary narrative (Vitullo 185).
Though some filmmakers, including Tristan Bauer (Iluminados por el
fuego, 2005) and Julio Cardoso (Locos de la bandera, 2012), have chosen
to deliver historical reconstructions of the conflict, the diverse fictions that
surrounded the war have also resulted in an equally sizeable corpus of more
playful and profane narratives, notably by writers such as Gamerro (Las islas,
1998), Rodolfo Fogwill (Los pichiciegos, 1983), and Patricio Pron (Una puta
mierda, 2007), and filmmakers such as José Luis Marqués (Fuckland, 2000).
Following in this playful trend is Minefield—or Campo minado, as it was
subsequently called in its Buenos Aires release—, a theatrical performance in
which Argentine and British veterans re-enact their experiences on the battle-
field.2 Nothing is completely black or white in Lola Arias’ 2016 production,
and this, I want to suggest, is one of its main achievements. Arias narrates
the 1982 war in a performance that challenges the dichotomies often present
in previous accounts of the conflict—victims/perpetrators, allies/enemies,
heroes/villains, spectators/actors, subjective memory/historical memory—and
delivers a play that avoids both Manichean readings of that painful history
and also dangerous discourses on forgetting and reconciliation, fostering
instead a more productive relationship between past, present, and future.3
I will specifically explore Arias’ conception of theatre as a “living crea-
ture” and a “social experiment” with a high degree of unpredictability, which
is how she described the play in a lecture that she gave on June 6, 2016, at
King’s College, London. The experimental gathering of performers who
fought against each other and who considered themselves foes during the
war poses a series of potential problems regarding semi-autobiographical
performances of trauma, including the risks of re-victimizing those who
went through painful experiences and of feeding the morbid gaze that often
characterizes audiences of what Leigh Gilmore has called performances of
“limit-cases.”4 I will argue, however, that Arias not only successfully over-
comes these risks with the aid of playful distancing devices, but also dem-
onstrates how theatre can become an affective space of empowerment and
enunciation in which the marginal and vulnerable subject can “talk out, talk
back, talk otherwise” and “literally take centre stage” (Heddon 55), thereby
gaining visibility and producing an empathic connection with the audience.
SPRING 2017 105
Old Wounds, New Alliances

Minefield was staged for the first time in May and June 2016 at the Brigh-
ton Theatre Festival and at London’s Royal Court Theatre in the framework
of the LIFT festival. With a combination of film, acting, and testimonies, as
well as technology, thunderous rock, and punk music, Arias puts on stage three
former Argentine soldiers: Marcelo Vallejo, member of a mortar team and
now a champion triathlete; Rubén Otero, survivor of the sinking of the ARA
General Belgrano and now a member of the Get Back Trio, a Beatles tribute
band; and Gabriel Sagastume, a soldier and now a criminal attorney. Their
British counterparts are: Lou Armour, a former prisoner of the Argentines
and now a special-needs teacher; David Jackson, who worked in intelligence
during the war and who is now a psychologist; and Sukrim Rai, a Nepalese-
Ghurka who fought in the war and only recently acquired British citizenship.
The six performers narrate and reenact on stage different aspects of the
war in chronological order: the reasons that led them to join the army; whether
they killed someone or witnessed the deaths of their fellow soldiers; how they
were received when they returned home; and what they do now, more than
thirty years after the war. Arias explores once again topics that have defined
most of her oeuvre: theatre as a medium to revive the past and recover lost or
blocked memories; the idea of a dynamic and changing performance in which
life feeds theatre and theatre has concrete effects on the lives of the perform-
ers; and the use of autofiction, as well as trans-medial and ludic structures.
The play has its origins in a video-installation, Veterans (2014), that Arias
made as a contribution to a project titled After the War, for which twenty-five
artists from all over the world were invited to London to create a piece on
the consequences of war.5 Veterans was also exhibited in 2016 in the Parque
de la Memoria in Buenos Aires as part of Arias’ exhibition Doble de riesgo
and will soon be released as a documentary film. For Minefield the director
maintained the concept of that initial project—the idea that the performers
were going to be veterans reenacting their experiences—and kept one of the
performers (Vallejo). Arias auditioned sixty more former soldiers from each
side before choosing the remaining five veterans. She worked in both coun-
tries separately and only saw the full cast for the first time in Buenos Aires:
“I was terrified of what was going to happen, but they ended up becoming
a group of performers sharing their memories and helping each other in
the scenes” (“Memory”). This experience, Arias believes, “created a bond
between them that was even stronger than the one created by war,” not least
because, as one of the performers remarks at the beginning of the play, the
rehearsals spanned a longer period than the war itself, which was over after
only seventy-four days.
Arias is not the first to address on stage the war in the South Atlantic. A
handful of British playwrights have focused on the war for their productions,
mainly in plays released during the immediate aftermath of the conflict and
as a means of exploring issues of class struggle under Prime Minister Mar-
garet Thatcher.6 In contrast to the relatively small number of plays released
in Britain, in Argentina in recent years there has been a growing number of
productions focused on the Malvinas/Falklands War.7 The disparity between
the numbers of theatrical productions on the subject in both countries might
speak to the fact that this conflict was only one of many military confrontations
that the British participated in during the past century, while it was the only
one fought by Argentine soldiers in the same period. Whereas in the United
Kingdom the South Atlantic conflict is rarely a part of public discourse, in
Argentina, children in some schools still sing the Malvinas anthem (as the
performers note in Minefield); there is a museum dedicated to the conflict
(the Museo Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur, which opened in Buenos
Aires in June 2014); the slogan “Las Malvinas son argentinas” can be found
everywhere; and the largest football stadium in Mendoza is called Malvinas
Argentinas. The growing interest in both the war and the postwar in Argen-
tine theatre is also not surprising if we remember that even though this was
a relatively short military confrontation, it is one that has not really ended.
As Bernard McGuirk explains, it is an “unfinished business,” one without
proper closure in the political or the diplomatic terrain, or in the lives of its
protagonists.8
Among the Argentine contemporary productions that address the Malvi-
nas War, Federico León’s Museo Miguel Ángel Boezzio (1998) is particularly
noteworthy, as it shares a series of conceptual similarities with Minefield.
These include the use of a real veteran on stage; the blurring of the boundaries
between fact and fiction; the inclusion of melodramatic episodes that draw
a fine line between comedy and tragedy; the showcasing of the veterans’
personal archives as if they were pieces from a museum; the search for an
empathic connection between the performer and the audience; the inclusion
of “behind-the-scenes” elements or things that happened during rehearsals
for the play; and an uncomfortable ending that foregrounds the responsibility
of civil society in the traumas of the post-war period.9
Although the similarities between Museo Miguel Ángel Boezzio and Mine-
field are clear, Arias’ performance is, nevertheless, more playful than León’s,
SPRING 2017 107
and it showcases veterans who not only remember their war experiences on
stage but also reenact them despite having, unlike Boezzio, no experience in
acting. Moreover, Minefield produces a shift in relation to previous theatri-
cal performances of the war by presenting to the audience an unprecedented
cooperation on stage between former enemies, a means of delivering a more
comprehensive memory of the event. Furthermore, the status of the play as
what I call here an “autofiction of the postwar” 10 differentiates it from other
cultural representations of the conflict in Argentina, including canonical texts
such as Los pichiciegos and popular films such as Iluminados por el fuego,
both of which are based on real events but more accurately described as fic-
tions (rather than autofictions) of war. Conversely, Minefield is not so much
a narrative about the war as it is a narrative about the postwar. In this respect,
Arias has said that “[n]o me interesa la guerra, me interesa la posguerra. Me
importa qué le pasa a una persona que pasó por esa experiencia. Me importa
qué hizo la memoria, qué borró, qué transformó” (Cruz, my emphasis).
Strictly speaking, however, Minefield shows the impossibility of drawing a
clear line between the war and the postwar and presents them as a continuum
of temporalities and experiences, or better, in juxtaposition, as anachronistic
montages of times, to put it in Georges Didi-Huberman’s terms.11
In the play the performers return to the islands through their memories
and in footage of trips made after the war that is shown to the audience on a
big screen displayed on stage. There is a moment, for example, when Vallejo,
one of the Argentine veterans, shows footage of a 2009 trip that he made to
the archipelago and the remnants that he found there, including parts of the
tent that he used during the war. The rest of the performers recall their time
on the Malvinas as if theatre were a time machine, a concept present in many
of Arias’ productions.12 The idea of return—not just a return to the islands
but also a return of the islands to whom some consider their legitimate own-
ers—is also implied in the name of The Beatles’ song that the performers
sing on stage, “Get Back,” which was also the inspiration for the name of a
tribute band led by one of the Argentine veterans, the Get Back Trio. And yet
it is very clear at the end of the show that on many levels the ex-combatants
never actually left the islands, or rather, the islands—and what happened
there—never left them.
Arias’ focus on a past event that is still an open wound for the performers
and her use of real-life accounts presented in fictional frameworks raise new
questions regarding the ethical and aesthetic implications of representing the
war in art and literature: Is it possible to keep talking about the “fictions of the
Photo: Royal Court, Tristam Kenton
war,” not to mention joking about the conflict, when there are real veterans
on stage? Can, and should, theatre become a site of mourning and catharsis
for vulnerable and traumatized subjects?
The empathic collaboration between the performers and the viewers in the
play offers a way out for some of these risks. As Alison Landsberg explains,
“the experience of empathy has more potential and is more politically useful
and progressive than its cousin sympathy” (149). While sympathy is a feel-
ing of simple identification with vulnerable subjects that reinforces victim-
hood and produces a sense of superiority in the audience, the experience of
empathy “is not purely emotional but also contains a cognitive component”
(149). Similarly, for Jill Bennett, empathy is the “most appropriate form of
engagement with trauma imagery” (8). Following Dominic LaCapra, she sug-
gests that to empathize with the victim is to feel for another while “becoming
aware of a distinction between one’s own perception and the experience of the
other” (8). The experience of empathy is thus in opposition to other common
reactions to trauma art such as over-identification, mimesis, or appropriation.
Certain aesthetic experiences, she argues, foster empathy by creating what
Gilles Deleuze has called an affective encounter with a sign, a sign that is
felt rather than recognized, a sign that triggers thought and critical inquiry,
“a sign that touches, but does not necessarily communicate the ‘secret’ of
personal experience” (6). Minefield nurtures empathy in two directions: the
SPRING 2017 109
Argentines and the British create an empathic bond with one another, and
we, the audience, empathize with the experiences of the performers on stage.
While empathy encourages understanding, it does not foster, and in fact
rejects, any idea of reconciliation or forgetting. As pointed out by Argentine
writer Mariana Enríquez in a radio review, Minefield “propone pensar el
conflicto en conflicto.” In this play, the war, and more specifically the issue of
the sovereignty of the islands, is left unresolved. At the same time, however,
Minefield invites us to embrace the possibility that the Argentine and British
people can live together, even in disagreement.
Indeed, although they have clearly bonded on a personal level during
rehearsals and travels and have found ways of communicating with each
other despite the language barrier—in the play there are subtitles in both
English and Spanish—, the performers still hold contrasting views on the
subject of the sovereignty of the islands. Toward the end of the play, one of
the Argentine performers says that “entre los veteranos no discutimos el tema
de la soberanía de las islas. Nosotros decimos que son argentinas, ellos dicen
que los isleños son ingleses.” He then gives his own version of the history
of the archipelago: “[N]osotros decimos islas Malvinas”; “los habitantes
originales de las islas Malvinas eran los lobos patagónicos”; “desde 1833
la Argentina nunca dejó de reclamar las islas.” One of the British veterans
then offers his own view on the subject: “[T]hey are called Falklands”; “the
original inhabitants were birds”; “Argentina ended the negotiations started
by the UN”; “the islanders voted to be British.” They end the discussion by
agreeing to disagree and by telling the audience that they can find both ver-
sions, in either English or Spanish, on Wikipedia.
The issue of sovereignty, then, is not entirely absent from the play (how
could it be?), but it is less relevant to the director than the collateral effects
of the war and the performance on the lives of the veterans. “I don’t know
what are going to be the collateral effects of my work” (“Memory,” my em-
phasis), she said about her plays, curiously using an expression taken from
the sphere of war and the relatively new field of post-traumatic stress disor-
der, thus reinforcing the parallelism between stage, battlefield, and therapy,
three spheres that are constantly referred to, represented, and sometimes
interchanged in the play.
Collateral Dramas
Even for the director it was a revelation to meet the British soldiers and
to realize that their memories of the war were as harrowing as those of the
Argentines. Whereas the latter were eighteen-year-old conscripts, the former

were mostly professional members of the armed forces. Given these key
differences between the groups, it was, according to Arias, difficult for the
Argentines to feel compassion for the British or to suspect they were in pain,
too, after winning the war.
In the play, Marcelo reveals that when Argentine soldiers returned to the
continent, their superiors hid them in the military base and the former Campo
de Mayo in Buenos Aires, infamously known as the “Argentine Auschwitz”
during the dictatorship, fed them so they looked as if they had been taken
care of on the islands, and forced them to sign a document in which they
promised not to tell anyone about what happened there. He felt so abandoned
and betrayed that he started to drink and take drugs. He subsequently tried to
take his own life by throwing himself into water, knowing that he could not
swim. Fortunately, the fellow veterans with whom he was travelling saved
him just in time. Following that incident he got help and eventually became
a professional swimmer.
Although the British soldiers were welcomed as heroes when they re-
turned to Brittain, they also “felt disconnected” from their family, friends, and
wives, as one of the performers says on stage. Lou confesses that he never
attends the gatherings of veterans in his country because he still feels guilty
about mourning an Argentine soldier who died in his arms instead of mourning
his own dead. Moreover, while the end of the war meant for Argentina the end
of the dictatorship—Kohan has said in this respect that “Malvinas es la guerra
que convenía perder” (“Malvinas”)—, for the British the war resulted in a
huge boost in popularity for Thatcher, ushering in a period that condemned
many of those living in the UK (including former soldiers), particularly those
living in the north of the country, to unemployment and poverty.
Facing each other again, but in a different kind of (neutral) territory—the
theater, equally foreign to both—, the British and Argentine performers show
the audience that they can find a common ground to talk about the war without
compromising their values and ideas but while still exercising an empathic
understanding for what the other has gone through.
The collaborative nature of the performance and the recurrent idea in
Arias’ work of gathering together, in the enclosed and observed space of the
theater, people who used to occupy opposite sides of history to see what hap-
pens, has led the director to refer to her own projects as “living creatures” and
“social experiments” with a high degree of unpredictability. Arias’ decision to
include a Gurkha in Minefield is, in this particular “experiment,” perhaps the
SPRING 2017 111
most risky. It was difficult to guess how an Argentine veteran of the Malvinas/
Falklands War would react when confronted with this type of soldier, who
fought for Great Britain for money and who acquired the reputation of being
a true savage on the battlefield. “Los Gurkhas eran mercenarios asesinos,”
Marcelo explains at one point, “combatieron en Goose Green y mataron unos
setecientos soldados. Con sus cuchillos cortaron cabezas, piernas, brazos,
dejaron los cuerpos despedazados en el campo de batalla. Hasta les cortaron
las orejas a los soldados argentinos y después se las comieron.” These were
the rumors that he had heard not only from other soldiers but also in the me-
dia. In his meetings with other veterans after the war, he used to say that he
would have loved to have a Gurkha in the room to “agarrarme a trompadas.”
“Ahora,” he concludes, looking at Sukri, “tengo uno acá, enfrente mío.”
But instead of starting a fight, he says that now he could easily have a beer
with him. Later, they both participate in a sort of improvised “talk show” or
group therapy, hosted by Lou, in which each of them talks about how they
feel about one another.
The talk show/group therapy scene is crucial in the play, as it points
to Arias’ conception of theatre as an affective site for collectively working
through trauma. As highlighted by Argentine actor and director Rafael Spre-
gelburd, there is a common prejudice against the therapeutic in art. And yet,
Spregelburd asks, “¿[q]ué otro destino mejor para el arte que la sanación de
las almas de quienes lo invocan?” In addition to what the performers gain and
what they risk when reconstructing their war experiences in front of a group
of anonymous spectators, the audience might also feel a certain responsibil-
ity when attending this type of semi-autobiographical play, not least because
its reaction when listening to such traumatic stories—especially when these
responses include indifference, detachment, or morbidity—raises a number of
questions about the ethical implications of reenacting war memories on stage.
Healing Stages
The idea that theatre can become a sort of laboratory to experiment with
real social dramas, providing protagonists with an opportunity to reenact trau-
matic episodes of their past, is present in similarly provocative contemporary
artistic projects. One performance or social experiment that was an inspiration
for Arias when creating Minefield was The Battle of Orgreave (2001). In this
work, Jeremy Deller reenacted a 1984 miners’ strike in which strikers were
chased up a hill and pursued through a village, an image that he had seen on
television and that had acquired for him, as he comments on his blog, “the
quality of a war scene rather than a labour dispute.” The project involved
800 historical performers and 200 former miners who had participated in
the original conflict. Deller describes his work as “digging up a corpse and
giving it a proper post-mortem, or as a thousand-person crime re-enactment.”
Harun Farocki’s Immersion (2009), a piece that Arias also explicitly ac-
knowledges as an important influence on her work, also has much in common
with Minefield. This 20-minute video installation consists of two screens. On
one of them we see a U.S. soldier with headphones and virtual-reality glasses;
on the other a videogame represents a scene that he lived during the recent
war in Iraq. As the soldier relates his experiences, a psychiatrist dressed in
a military uniform reproduces these experiences with a virtual programme
and pre-designed images of tanks, streets, houses, civilians, and so on. The
soldier looks distressed, especially when he recalls how he witnessed the
dismembered body of his partner. But when the session ends, he smiles, and
the audience applauds. This was not a real reenactment of a war experience,
but a demonstration of a new form of therapy in the US designed to treat
post-traumatic stress and prepared by military psychologists to show how this
software works. “Vi esta película en un museo en París el año pasado,” writes
Arias in an article about Farocki’s work, “y hacía mucho que no lloraba en
un museo. Ninguna imagen real de la guerra por television, ninguna madre
llorando a su hijo muerto con los brazos estirados en una foto del periódico
produjo en mí la conmoción de la reconstrucción ficcional de una experiencia
de guerra en videojuego” (“La memoria”).13
Both Minefield and Immersion highlight the potential healing and affective
powers of performance and simulation in the aftermath of trauma and raise ques-
tions on identification and empathy with the audience. In addition, they draw
on the role and responsibility of the media and technology in the production as
well as the recording of violent events. Immersion reminds us that videogames
are not only used in post-traumatic stress therapy to trigger repressed memories,
but also in the training of soldiers who go to war. Meanwhile, in Minefield,
there are many references to the role that popular magazines, broadcasts, and
television shows played in the South Atlantic conflict.
Moreover, in the three works—The Battle of Orgreave, Immersion, and
Minefield—the artists tread a fine line between aesthetic experimentation
and the risk of making a spectacle out of suffering and of re-victimizing the
performers, many of them clearly still vulnerable subjects. The “talk show”
led by Loud, for example, was one of the few features criticized in some
reviews of Minefield. Arias has stated that when the performers “are on stage
SPRING 2017 113
they are strong enough, but they are also vulnerable and the audience feel
that anything could happen” (“Memory”). It is worth asking, then, whether
there is a risk of going too far with artistic experimentation at the expense of
the well-being of the performers.
There are some examples from both the play and what took place behind
the scenes that might suggest that the director overstepped that line. In her
lecture at King’s College, Arias told the audience that Lou had had flashbacks
during rehearsals and lost his speech, at which point she suggested that he
go to therapy in Buenos Aires. In the play, there is also a sequence in which
David (the psychologist of the group) pretends to be in a therapy session with
Marcelo. Although the scene is scripted, the spectators nonetheless feel like
unwilling voyeurs, witnesses of someone else’s pain. There were also times
when the veterans appeared to be on the verge of tears. But for Arias the rec-
ognition and standing ovations that the ex-combatants receive at the end of
each performance outweigh the dangers of creating entertainment with suffer-
ing. The whole process, she said during her lecture, was ultimately a healing
one, as proved by the fact that Lou started therapy and that Marcelo started
learning English, a language that until rehearsals he could not bear to hear.
While only the performers themselves can determine whether or not Arias’
play enables healing, it is certain that Minefield both nurtures and legitimizes
an alternative place of enunciation for the ex-combatants to those in which
they are often placed in other dominant narratives of the war. Instead of por-
traying them as stereotypically suffering victims, or as too young, too old or
too crazy to have any authority to narrate the war, Minefield introduces the
performers as complex individuals irreducible to any collective label.
In this respect, Arias further echoes Travnik’s close-up portraits of former
Argentine soldiers and his intention to de-naturalize the names that they have
received in the decades following the war—“chicos de la guerra,” “locos
de la bandera,” “veteranos,” and “héroes de Malvinas”—offering instead
their particularized presence before the camera (Speranza, “Retratos en dos
tiempos”). In Travnik’s images, the soldiers are so different from one other
(in age, physical appearance, expressions) that it is, in effect, difficult to fit
them all into one of the categories mentioned above. For Natalia Fortuny, the
particularity of each of these portraits is reinforced by the extreme close-ups
used by Travnik and the way he shows the singularity of each face, present-
ing the folds and shadows of these “rostros-paisajes de guerra” as if they
were enigmatic maps: “[L]a piel es aquí espacio fáctico, superficie y mapa
del trauma.” In Minefield, the singularity of each individual is clear in the
diverse circumstances that led the Argentines to join the army. Gabriel had
no choice because, at the time, military service was compulsory in Argentina.
Conversely, Marcelo liked being a soldier and was so good at it that he was
asked to join the military. The personalized image of the Argentine veterans
not only contrasts with the way they have often been treated in Argentine
narratives about the war but also with the way British soldiers used to see
them. At one point, one of the British performers says in this respect that until
he met the actors in Minefield, the Argentines he had met were all arrogant,
wounded, dead, or defeated.
Similarly, the British ex-combatants are also depicted as individuals with
heterogeneous backgrounds (some came from military families while others
did not), experiences, and interests, which avoids the production of abstract
or stereotypical images of the soldiers. This heterogeneity contrasts with the
way they often appear in Argentine accounts of the Malvinas, where they
are always “the enemy,” the professional soldiers, or the representatives of
the empire. They have appeared in these imaginaries as a collective identity,
both feared and hated.
Thus, Minefield challenges these prejudices and delivers a more compre-
hensive image of those who went to war, both British and Argentines, enrich-
ing the gallery of characters created in the past by writers and playwrights from
both nations.14 More importantly, Arias provides the veterans with a space to
speak in first person and to provide their own (self) portraits to the audience.
Autobiographical theatre is in this sense a privileged space for representing a
more complex and layered subject, since “in the act of representing the self,
there is always more than one self to contend with; the self is unavoidably
split. There is a self who was and the self who is. There is the self who is
performed, and the performing self” (Heddon 28). In Minefield, the spectator
is thus confronted with veterans who are not only difficult to categorize but
who are also split subjects, selves that are at the same time both truthful and
fictional, persons and characters.
Friend or Foe?
In Arias’ attempt to complicate the images of those who participated in the
war and to challenge dichotomies such as enemy/ally and hero/villain, three
particular sequences force the audience to revise its preconceptions about the
veterans, their armies, and their governments. In the first one, Lou tells the
audience how he was caught by Argentine soldiers and subsequently taken to
a plane, at which point he remembered the rumor about “death flights” and
SPRING 2017 115
feared a similar fate. For the Argentine audience, the “enemy” becomes here
a potential victim of the Argentine army, even a potential “disappeared.” It is
almost impossible not to think about the thousands of victims who met their
fate in the watery cemetery of the Río de la Plata during the military regime,
only this time, the prisoner of the dictatorship is British.
In the second sequence, one of the most moving moments of the play,
Lou relates how an Argentine soldier died in his arms and how he will never
forget his face. This episode was first told in an interview that he gave as part
of a documentary programme made in England only months after the war. In
the documentary, which is shown on a large screen on stage, Lou appears,
young, with tears in his eyes, clearly still shocked by the event. Before dying,
the Argentine soldier spoke to him in English, told him that he once went to
Oxford, and confessed that he didn’t even know why he was fighting in the
war. The scene points to a moment of revelation for the British veteran, the
moment in which the enemy acquired a face (and a voice), one that looked
and spoke surprisingly like him.
The final scene that challenges the audience’s prejudices about who was
the victim and who was the perpetrator in this war is also the one that gives
the play its name: Campo minado. While Gabriel and his fellow soldiers
were on Mount Longdon, starving after days without food, a few of them
decided to look for food in a house nearby, but on their way back they entered
a minefield and were all killed. Gabriel was asked to pick up their remains
with a superior officer. He tells the story to the audience using toy soldiers
and a miniature model of the landscape, all projected on the big screen. But
the mediations do not alleviate the impact of that terrible and sad memory,
not least because later in his life he learned that the mines had been put there
not by the British army but by the Argentine armed forces.
These three scenes underscore the senselessness of the war and the
fact that it was ultimately a tragic game of dominance and ambition led by
Thatcher and Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, depicted as caricatures in the play
by performers wearing masks. Later in the play, this reading of the war as an
absurdity is reinforced when the Argentine performers relate how they were
told that the British did not know why they were fighting, while the British
were told that the Argentines were beaten by their own superiors and forced
to fight for a dictatorship. These heartbreaking statements might reveal that
the veterans were all being used as pawns in a chess game and that the real
enemies, their national leaders, had orchestrated a farce to feed their own
obsessive desire for power.
And yet the war should not simply be reduced to a meaningless confron-
tation between two mad people, since in many ways the conflict gave—and
continues to give—meaning to an important part of the pasts and presents
of the performers. Moreover, falling back on this common interpretation of
the war would reduce the veterans to mere victims, the last thing that Arias
and the performers want us to think. They appear on stage because they have
something to say and because they refuse to be portrayed as either heroes or
victims—both speechless figures to be admired or pitied—in the narratives
of the war.
In this aspect, Arias’ veterans are different from the ones depicted by
Travnik, whose portraits are austere, silent, and laconic, accompanied only
by information about the subjects’ rank and military function.15 Jens Ander-
mann argues that Travnik’s work is about the unspeakable and “unnamable”
nature of the war experience:
[E]n cuanto infantes, “chicos de la guerra”, los veteranos han que-
dado, y siguen quedando, fuera del lenguaje —o, mutatis mutandis,
Malvinas ha quedado en una zona de tiempo de la que ellos no pue-
den dar testimonio porque carecen de títulos para ponerle nombre
de experiencia. Pasaron, por decirlo así, de “chicos” a “veteranos”
sin poder contar su experiencia de “soldados”.
In many ways, Minefield fills that gap and becomes that space of longing
where soldiers tell their stories of struggle and survival both on and off the
battlefield. Arias’ play is pure noise. The music is loud and the performers
speak different languages (Spanish, English, and Nepalese) and often talk over
one another. They have been silent (and silenced) for too long, or have been
spoken for by other voices and discourses. Now it is their turn to speak up.
Closure Without Closure

With Minefield, Lola Arias offers the veterans of the Malvinas/Falkland
War a space of enunciation that requests neither sympathy nor veneration
from the audience. The ex-combatants reenact their war experiences and
appear on stage as witnesses, not only in the sense of having been there and
participated in the events, but also in the sense of being observers of their own
lives. This displacement allows them to evaluate the events and memories
with a certain distance and detachment, converting their subjective experi-
ences into collective and national narratives. “When they become actors,”
Arias said at King’s College, “they take distance and see their lives from the
outside, transforming their memories into history.”
SPRING 2017 117
In coming to terms with a painful past, the performers become an aid

to one another, listening to one another’s memories, asking questions, and
offering comfort. Elizabeth Jelin suggests that in the task of bearing witness
to trauma we all need the presence of (foreign) others, estranged to us, with
the capacity to interrogate and express curiosity about the events and also
to demonstrate compassion and empathy for what we have been through
(69). For these performers, there is no one more “other” than their former
enemies of war.
There is no real closure in Minefield. The veterans laugh together, sing
songs side by side, fool around, and help one other on stage, but that does
not mean that they have overcome their differences or reconciled themselves
to their own ghosts from the past. The Argentines wear clothes bearing the
slogan “Malvinas argentinas,” and during the final performance in London
they all sang the Malvinas anthem together at the end of the performance.
They even converted their hotel room in London into what they described as
a trench, adorned with photographs of their fellow soldiers and of the time
they went to Buckingham Palace and sang the Malvinas anthem to the queen.
In a similar vein, the British soldiers expressed through social media their
desire to make their fellow soldiers proud with this play.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Arias says that “the tension will
always be there. This isn’t about reconciliation but about being able to live
with disagreement. So far, we’ve been able to do something together—and
that’s much more than our countries have managed” (Cavendish). After one
of the shows, one of the British performers received an email from a spectator
who told him that after seeing the play his son said, “Papá, si hubiese más
obras como estas no existirían las guerras, porque estos soldados no habrían
aceptado enfrentarse” (Cruz). Similarly, Spregelburd writes that, despite the
lack of institutional support in both countries, Minefield is a project that “bien
mirado es capaz de evitar una guerra.” Perhaps these are exaggerations, but
Arias’ play is nonetheless an event in the sense popularized in 1988 by Alain
Badiou—a breakthrough in the field of knowledge about the war, a point of
no return in terms of how we think about both its consequences in the present
and also about those who participated on the frontlines.
Towards the end of the play, there is some aggression and “confrontational
punk mode” (Taylor), particularly in the last song, when all the performers
play very loud instruments and “shoot” disturbing and defiant questions at
the audience: “Would you go to war? Would you? What would you fight
for? Your patria? Oil? Have you ever killed a man?” Here, as Spregelburd
Photo: Royal Court, Tristam Kenton
states, “la obra invierte su escenario: seis hombres afectados observan a una
platea inquieta que ha venido a juzgarlos.” Indeed, this final song reminds
the audience members that they are not just passive spectators of memories
that belong to others but also an integral part of that history. The questions,
shouted by the performers in a bellicose manner, highlight the role of society
in the Malvinas/Falklands War and the postwar, a society that encouraged it,
SPRING 2017 119
supported it, and later abandoned and forgot those who fought in it. Many
spectators felt uncomfortable with this part of the play, perhaps because they
(we) were no longer the observers of this social experiment but had become
part of the experiment itself.16 Minefield is thus more than a play about old
enemies and forgotten pasts; it is about our own responsibilities towards that
shared history, its present legacies, and the impossibility of ultimately draw-
ing a clear line between “us” and “them.”
University of Liverpool
Notes
1
Kohan also states that “[t]ampoco puede decirse que no hubiese interés en atender estos relatos;
el libro agotó varias ediciones en pocos meses” (El país 269).
2
In recent years, Lola Arias has gained considerable recognition both in Argentina and abroad. In
2014 she received the prestigious Premio Konex, awarded to the five most important figures of Argen-
tine theatre between 2009 and 2013. One of her most acclaimed plays to date is the biodrama Mi vida
después (2008), in which six actors born in the 1970s and 1980s reconstruct their parents’ youth during
the 1976-1983 dictatorship through pictures, letters, records, old clothes, toys, and blurred memories.
Her other works include the theatrical plays Familienbande (2009), El año en que nací (2012), and The
Art of Arriving (2015); and the performances Chácara Paraíso (2007, Stefan Kaegi), Maids (2010-2011),
and Audition for a Demonstration (2014). She is also the author of La escuálida familia (2001) and Los
posnucleares (2011), among other volumes, and writes a regular column for the newspaper La Nación.
There is a growing number of studies on the work of Lola Arias, particularly on Mi vida después. See
Jordana Blejmar (171-96), Paola Hernández (115-28), Mariana Eva Perez (6-16), Cecilia Sosa (105-28),
and Brenda Werth (“La arquitectura” 338-56), among others.
3
The use of a mixed cast and a plurality of biases and voices in approaching the past are key
features of Arias’ previous productions, particularly her trilogy about the dictatorship: Mi vida después
(2008), El año en que nací (2012), and Melancolía y manifestaciones (2012), recently published together
in one book (2016). The performers of El año en que nací and Mi vida después are all members of the
post-dictatorship generation in Chile and Argentina, respectively. In these works, each cast member rep-
resents a point of view about the events in question that both contrasts with and complements the others.
In El año en que nací there is a scene in which the performers literally position themselves to the left or
right of the other performers to indicate to the audience the heterogeneous nature of the ideological views
of the cast and of their parents. In Mi vida después, the daughter of a man killed by the dictatorship and
the son of a disappeared father perform next to the daughter of a member of the military who snatched a
baby from one of his victims and raised him as his own.
4
“Limit-cases” refer to plays that use real biographies of traumatic events for the script but combine
them with fictional elements. In that sense they are “testimonial projects, but they do not bring forward
cases within protocols of legal testimony” (Gilmore 146). Limit-cases then are an alternative form of
knowledge, ones that do not dismiss the imagination as a medium for conveying experience.
5
In Veterans six Argentine veterans from the Malvinas/Falklands War remember and recreate their
war experiences in spaces where they currently work or attend: among them, a psychoanalyst reenacts
a bomb explosion at the psychiatric hospital where he works; a triathlon champion (Marcelo Vallejo)
reenacts the death of his partner in the swimming pool where he trains; an opera singer performs the
sinking of the General Belgrano in a theater; and a former Argentine Air Force pilot uses miniature toy
soldiers and planes to tell viewers how he narrowly escaped an air attack on the last day of the war.
6
Steven Berkoff’s Sink the Belgrano, for example, released in 1986 at the Half Moon Theatre
in London, addresses Margaret Thatcher’s role in the war with a character humorously named Maggot
Scratcher and the actions of her foreign minister, Francis Pym (Pimp in the play), as well as her minister
of defence, John Nott (Nit). In her study on British Falkland War plays, Melissa Green also mentions
Arrivederci Millwall (directed by Nick Perry, 1985) and Restoration (directed by Edward Bond, first
released in 1981 and rereleased in 1988 with the inclusion of subtle references to the war). Arrivederci
Millwall is about Billy, a working-class south Londoner whose brother goes to the Malvinas/Falkland
War. Billy supports Millwall Football Club, and the play draws on the parallels between football and war
to explore the impact of violence on the families of the soldiers. In 1990 the BBC produced a screenplay
based on the work. In Restoration, a play set in the eighteenth century in England, there are no explicit
references to the Malvinas/Falklands War but subtle allusions to the hypocrisy of Thatcher’s politics and
the mistreatment of the working classes during her administration. In 1998, Guy Masterson released
A Soldier’s Song, a play based on a testimonial book written by a British soldier and his memories of
the front line. In 2002, on the twentieth anniversary of the war, Jennifer Lunn directed a new version of
Falkland Sound based on the letters and poems that twenty-five-year-old Lieutenant David Tinker, killed
in action, wrote to his wife from the battlefield. The play, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, first opened at
the Royal Court Theatre in June 1983.
7
In Presencia del “inglés” en el teatro y el cine argentinos: de los orígenes a Malvinas (2011),
Victoria Cox and Nora Glickman identify a number of plays on the subject, notably Del sol naciente
(Griselda Gambaro, 1983) and Las Malvinas (Osvaldo Guglieminio, 1995). The first, written during the
dictatorship and released just after the return to democracy, explores the effects of the war on the mothers
of the soldiers. Las Malvinas is about a father who studied at Eton and who rejects his Argentine origins,
a son who is a true nationalist and volunteers to fight in the war, and a mother who fears that her son has
became a “populista, subversivo y cabecita negra” (110). More recently, in 2007, Jorge Cortez released
at the Centro Cultural Holver Martínez Borelli in Salta Un soldado de Malvinas, a play about a soldier
forgotten by the country for which he fought. In 2011, one of the most acclaimed playwrights in Argentina
and current director of the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, Alejandro Tantanian, adapted Carlos Gamerro’s
delirious novel Las islas in a spectacular production staged at the San Martín National Theatre, and in 2012,
Julio Cardoso, the director of Locos de la bandera, presented in that same theater Islas de la memoria, a
reconstruction of the history of the islands and of the war using real testimonies and documents. In 2014,
Rodrigo Cárdenas released Malvinas, ningún cielo más querido by Carlos Balmaceda, a humorous piece
about five British and Marxist Kelpers who live on the islands and see the 1982 war as the perfect time
to carry out a socialist revolution. Finally, three productions directed by post-dictatorship playwrights
and released in 2015 also focus on the lives of the soldiers and their families: 1982 obertura solemne by
Lisandro Fiks; Los hombres vuelven al monte by Fabián Díaz; and Isla flotante by Patricio Abadi. Arias
was born in 1976, the year of the military coup. Fiks and Abadi were 10 and 1, respectively, during the
war; Díaz was born in 1983 and is the son of a soldier who survived the conflict.
8
Juan Travnik reports that many of the subjects portrayed in his project told him that the silent
welcome they received upon returning to the mainland was more painful than the suffering they went
through on the islands. It is common knowledge that after the war the number of Argentine soldiers who
committed suicide (between 300 and 400) was higher than the number of soldiers who perished on the
battlefield. In the case of the British combatants, while the Daily Mail, the BBC and some veterans groups
have often reported that more Falklands veterans committed suicide than were killed in the war, a 2013
study especially commissioned by the Ministry of Defence in the UK stated that while 255 British soldiers
were killed in action during the conflict, 95 committed suicide in its aftermath (Norton-Taylor).
9
Museo Miguel Angel Boezzio was part of the Proyecto Museos (1994-2000) organised by Vivi
Tellas. The project involved choosing a series of museums in Buenos Aires and allocating each one to
a theatre director who had to use it as the subject of a performance. Federico León went to the Museo
SPRING 2017 121
Aeronáutico and became fascinated with the section dedicated to aviation during the Malvinas War. In
his piece León invites Miguel Angel Boezzio, an ex-Malvinas combatant and a former actor, to show his
personal archive, his own personal museum, to the audience. This archive includes his CV, photographs
of his girlfriend (who committed suicide after a fake coffin supposedly carrying his body arrived at her
house), a certificate of attendance for a karate tournament, and a certificate of participation in a football
championship between inmates of the Borda mental asylum. The performance starts when Boezzio hands
out the programme at the theatre doors to the audience before delivering a sort of performative lecture
on his life, a structure that resembles Arias’ series of talks entitled Mis documentos. Like the performers
in Minefield, Boezzio becomes then “a guide in the museum of himself” (León 78), although strictly
speaking he is not alone on stage as León speaks to him via an earpiece during the play. At the end of the
performance the walls of the theater are lit up and the audience can see all the documents and photographs
displayed on them. Both León’s piece and Minefield are political because, as Brenda Werth puts it, they
pose questions to the audience about responsibility and perception. At the end of the play, Boezzio says:
“Bueno, esto ha sido el Museo Miguel Angel Boezzio. Gracias por aceptarme en este país. ¿Cuál es la
verdad? ¿Qué es mentira? A partir de lo que yo demostré. Porque ustedes tienen parte de mi culpa.”
10
The term “autofiction” was coined by French writer Serge Doubrovsky in 1977 and describes
texts characterized by a simultaneous or ambiguous pact with the reader in stories based on true events
(autobiographical pact) but presented within imaginary frameworks (fictional pact).
11
I have explained this idea of “anachronism” and its relevance for post-dictatorship Argentine
culture elsewhere. See Blejmar 25-26.
12
“This play,” Arias said in an interview with The Guardian, “is like a time machine. We see these
men as they are now in their 50s and we also catch a glimpse of their younger selves, those young men
in their late teens and early 20s who went to war” (Gardner).
13
Minefield also has some connections with two other pieces that were showing in the UK at the
time it was being staged. First is the play The Beanfield (2016), a reenactment by young actors of the 1985
Battle of Beanfield between 500 new-age travellers and environmentalists and riot police at Stonehenge,
England. Like Minefield, this piece (in turn influenced by Jeremy Deller’s film) also combines screens
on stage and a playful style and aims to recreate an event that happened many decades ago. Second, Ro-
man Krznaric’s Empathy Museum, exhibited in the framework of the same festival (LIFT) that hosted
Minefield, presents a shoe shop in which visitors are invited to literally walk in the shoes of a sex worker,
a fireman, or a sewer worker, to listen to their stories of love, loss, and suffering through headphones,
and to establish an empathic and physical bond with them. Both this project and Arias’ play draw on the
potential of reenactment to understand not only our own memories and experiences but also those of
the people around us. In this respect, one of the most powerful moments in Minefield takes place when
Marcelo talks about the magazines that his father bought during the conflict but which he had never seen
until the rehearsals: “Estas revistas [Gente, Somos] las compraba mi papá durante la guerra. Nunca las
miré, hasta que empecé los ensayos. No imaginé que buscándome a mí lo iba a encontrar a él,” he says
while the screens on stage show a press photograph of a British soldier (Lou) with his hands up, captured
by the Argentine army during the war.
14
In the aforementioned British plays, for example, which are focused on Thatcher, the War Cabinet,
British soldiers, and their families, Argentines never appear as individual characters. Likewise, Victoria
Cox and Noah Glickman have noted that the British figures that do stand out in Argentine theatre are the
dandy, the nanny, the banker, the marine, the engineer, the train driver, and the most popular of all, the
clown (10). British soldiers are, curiously, absent in this group.
15
The photographer’s interviews with the soldiers are omitted in the final series.
16
When I saw the play again in Buenos Aires some months later, I kept thinking about the reactions
of the audience and how that feeling of discomfort had, in fact, appeared earlier in the play. While in
London the spectators laughed at almost every joke, in Buenos Aires the atmosphere was more somber,
particularly in some moments, such as when the British performers sing a very catchy, and to some extent
humorous, song that was used during their training: “We’re all going on a summer holiday, we’re all
going to kill a spic [Spanish-speaking person from Latin America] or two. We’re all going to a summer
holiday, maybe for a week or two, or three, or four….” Earlier in the play, I sensed a similar discomfort
when the Argentine soldiers told the audience that during target practice and before the confrontation
with the British, after shooting they used to shout: “Viva por mi país, maté un chileno,” and also, “Viva
por mi país, maté un subversivo.” Conversely, the jokes that did spark laughter among the Argentine
audience were mainly those not directly related to the war, such as when one of the British performers
talks humorously about the number of psychologists that there are in Buenos Aires.
Works Cited
Andermann, Jens. “Sombras de luz: paisajes y cuerpos posfotográficos en la Argentina

contemporánea.” El pasado inasequible: desaparecidos, hijos y combatientes
en el arte y la literatura del nuevo milenio, edited by Jordana Blejmar, Silvana
Mandolessi, and Mariana Eva Perez, Eudeba, in press.
Arias, Lola. “Memory is a Minefield.” STR Edward Gordon Craig Lecture, 6 June
2016, King’s College, University of London.
_____. Mi vida después y otros textos. Random House, 2016.
_____. “La memoria es un videogame.” Página/12, 27 June 2010. Accessed 28
Feb. 2017.
Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Continuum, 2007.
Bennett, Jill. Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art. Stanford
UP, 2005.
Blejmar, Jordana. Playful Memories: The Autofictional Turn in Post-Dictatorship
Argentina. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Cavendish, Dominic. “The Scars Run Deep: The Explosive Drama that Reunites
Old Enemies on Stage.” The Telegraph, 27 May 2016. Accessed 2 July 2016.
Cox, Victoria, and Nora Glickman. Presencia del “inglés” en el teatro y el cine
argentinos: de los orígenes a Malvinas. Corregidor, 2011.
Cruz, Alejandro. “El campo minado de la memoria.” La Nación, 2 April 2016. Ac-
cessed 2 July 2016.
Deller, Jeremy. Jeremy Deller Blog, 1990-2016, jeremydeller.org. Accessed 2 July
2016.
Fortuny, Natalia. “Las pieles de la guerra: Imagen, memoria y superficie en dos
series fotográficas contemporáneas.” Revista Afuera, 15 Dec. 2015. Accessed
2 July 2016.
Gardner, Lyn. “Minefield: The Falklands drama taking veterans back to the battle.”
The Guardian, 26 May 2016. Accessed 2 July 2016.
Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography. Trauma and Testimony. Cornell UP,
2001.
Green, Melissa. “The Falklands War Plays and their Effect on Modern British Drama.”
Steven Berkoff Blog, 2001-2012. Accessed 2 July 2016.
SPRING 2017 123
Heddon, Deirdre. Autobiography and Performance. Palgrave, 2008.

Hernández, Paola. “Biografías escénicas: Mi vida después de Lola Arias.” Latin
American Theatre Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 2011, pp. 115-28.
Jelin, Elizabeth. “La narrativa personal de lo ‘invivible.’” Historia, memoria y fuen-
tes orales, edited by Vera Carnovale, Federico Lorenz, and Roberto Pittaluga,
CeDInCI, 2006, pp. 63-79.
Kohan, Martín. El país de la guerra. Eterna Cadencia, 2014.
_____. “Malvinas es la guerra que convenía perder.” Esquina Babel, 1 Dec. 2014.
Accessed 2 July 2016.
León, Federico. Registros: Teatro reunido y otros textos. Adriana Hidalgo, 2005.
McGuirk, Bernard. Falklands-Malvinas: An Unfinished Business. New Ventures,
2007.
Norton-Taylor, Richard. “Falklands war: new study debunks claims of high suicide
rates.” The Guardian, 14 May 2013. Accessed 28 Feb. 2017.
Perez, Mariana Eva. “Their Lives After: Theater as Testimony and the So-called
‘Second Generations’ in Post-dictatorship Argentina.” Journal of Romance
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Sosa, Cecilia. Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictator-
ship: The Performances of Blood. Tamesis, 2014.
Speranza, Graciela. “Retratos en dos tiempos.” No-retornable, 16 Dec. 2008. Ac-
cessed 3 March 2017.
Spregelburd, Rafael. “Rock de hombres quebrados.” Perfil. 26 Nov. 2016. Accessed
28 Feb. 2017,
Taylor, Paul. “Unforgettable Potent.” Independent. 6 June 2016. Accessed 2 July 2016.
Travnik, Juan. Malvinas. Retratos y paisajes de guerra. Lariviere, 2008.
Vitullo, Julieta. Islas imaginadas. La guerra de Malvinas en la literatura y el cine
argentinos. Corregidor, 2012.
Werth, Brenda. “Ritos íntimos y propuestas éticas en el Proyecto Museos de Vivi
Tellas,” Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença, vol. 3, no. 3, 2013, pp. 789-
804.
_____. “La arquitectura biográfica de Ciudades Paralelas.” Badebac, vol. 4, no. 7,
2014, pp. 336-56.
SPRING 2017 125
Archipelago of Memories: Affective Travelogue and Mourning

in La forma exacta de las islas
Irene Depetris Chauvin
Ancient and early medieval authorities consistently placed islands at

the confines of the Earth. Almost falling off the map, these tiny masses of
floating land have been a constant source of fascination throughout history.1
Because of their literal isolation, or merely the sense of detachment from
mainland society, islands are fabulous spaces in terms of both geography and
the imagination. More than scenic locations, they also function as literary
devices whose natural boundaries shape and contain narratives. As Gilles
Deleuze proposes, the actual and virtual spaces of islands lend themselves
to the exploration of the shifting relationship between the self and the other,
between nature and culture: “The deserted island is the origin, but a second
origin. From it everything begins anew. The deserted island is the necessary
minimum for this re-beginning, the material that survives the first origin, the
radiating seed or egg that must be sufficient to reproduce everything” (12).
This idea of a second origin, a rebirth, suggests that the “deserted island” is
a liminal and exceptional space that prompts us to imagine, question, and
recreate social bonds.
In Deleuze’s philosophical perspective, physical, human, and affec-
tive geography converge, but for Argentine people insular geography and
subjectivity are also inextricably intertwined with history. The 1982 armed
conflict in the Malvinas/Falkland Islands left an indelible mark on history
and set a decisive tone in Argentine literature and cinema. The war between
the Argentine junta and Margaret Thatcher’s Great Britain for sovereignty
over the Malvinas/Falkland Islands ended with a British victory and led to
the collapse of the regime that had ruled Argentina since 1976.2 As a haunt-
ing memory, the “Malvinas cause” repeatedly returns to trouble the national
imaginary. A review of British and Argentine films that focus on the 1982
war reveals the importance of the islands for identity politics, as most of the
narratives propose representations of geographical, social, political, and sym-
bolic proximity and distance between the archipelago and the center of the
“imagined community” of Argentina that ultimately serve to “recycle national
myths” (Tal).3 However, from another perspective, Julieta Vitullo finds that
the discourse of the “just cause,” which became hegemonic after 1982, has
been challenged by literary works that point to the impossibility of the heroic
epic narrative that has marked national discourse.4 In this sense, parodic or
melancholic narratives by authors such as Rodolfo Fogwill, Rodrigo Fresán,
Juan Forn, Martín Kohan, and Carlos Gamerro dissemble the mega-narrative
of the war, leaving behind only its fragments.
Travelogue and Mourning

This challenging of the heroic narrative and critical view of the Malvinas/
Falkland war inspired the production of La forma exacta de las islas (2012),
a documentary directed by Daniel Casabé and Edgardo Dieleke and based on
a script written in collaboration with the protagonist, Julieta Vitullo.5 Unlike
other films concerning the war, Dieleke and Casabé’s documentary eludes
the discourse of the “just cause” and questions the validity of the epic narra-
tive. Like many literary fictions about the aftermath of the war, this film is a
narrative of return that explores the islands, utilizing two trips as the starting
point of a personal quest. In the first, in 2006, Julieta travels to the Malvinas/
Falkland Islands to finish her doctoral thesis on the literature of the war. Upon
arrival, she meets two Argentine ex-combatants, Carlos Enriori and Dacio
Agretti, who were eighteen at the time of the conflict and who have returned
to the islands after twenty-five years. Drawn by their compelling stories, the
young Argentine researcher changes her plans and decides to film the men
for a week. This video footage, along with a subsequent intimate experience
linked to the trip, are two of the story lines in La forma exacta de las islas,
a meta-documentary that intertwines the images shot in 2006 with images
captured in 2010 by the directors accompanying Julieta in her return to the
islands, a place that has also a personal meaning for her.
Rather than a historical documentary or a war film, La forma exacta
de las islas is a “search documentary” and a “mourning film.” 6 For the two
veterans and Vitullo, the return is related to mourning. Carlos and Dacio
return to the Malvinas in 2006 to pay tribute to a fellow soldier fallen in
combat, while Julieta returns in 2010 to the islands where she conceived a
son who died within hours of birth. Although the spectators only learn about
SPRING 2017 127
Julieta’s son towards the end of the film, a general sense of loss permeates
the documentary, as fragments of travel memoirs, autobiographical discourse,
photographs, historical meditations, fiction, and literary criticism all merge
to reveal the permanent marks of pain through history. The overlapping of
travels of exploration and return to a fictional and geographic space is crucial
in the documentary, which follows the structure of a postmodern travelogue
to give an account, through a fragmented and self-reflective mode, of the
intimate connection between collective wounds and personal drama. In this
sense, the structure of the travel diary and other forms of personal expres-
sion in documentary film are indicative of an “affective turn” in historical
narratives. Such films, as can be seen in La forma exacta de las islas, are
characterized by an emphasis on the texture of the individual experience rather
than historical events, as well as by the use of narrative to repair, rather than
to establish or uphold, the “truth” in historical representations.
Because of the indeterminacy of its narrative, formal, and aesthetic
strategies, this hybrid “search documentary” articulates a territory of blur-
ring boundaries as well as fertile confluences. First of all, La forma exacta de
las islas is a travel diary that refers to itineraries that are primarily based on
previous literary representations. The structure of the cinematic travelogue
allows for the fusing of the chronicle of the actual journey with previous
imaginations and interpretations of the Malvinas. Along with excerpts of
Julieta’s travel diary and the veterans’ testimonies, the directors’ voiceovers
articulate fragments of Rodolfo Fogwill’s and Carlos Gamerro’s fictions
as well as passages from Charles Darwin’s travelogue. These references to
testimonies, literary texts, and exploration diaries reveal that no landscape is
ever seen for the first time. And yet La forma exacta de las islas is unique in
Malvinas/Falkland cinematography precisely because instead of relying on the
use of archival footage, it was shot in these remote islands, which have been
repeatedly and vividly imagined but never actually seen by the majority of
Argentines. In the movie, we vicariously navigate the territory of the islands
through images that alternately come from Julieta’s erratic handycam 2006
footage and from Dieleke and Casabé’s camera as they follow Julieta’s solitary
walks and meetings with locals in her return to the Malvinas four years later.
In a fragmentary way, the film shifts back and forth between one trip and the
other. The voiceovers of the directors combine with the voice of an actress
who reads fragments from the journal that Julieta wrote on her first trip, her
personal diary, and her doctoral research thesis, all of which steadily produces
a multifocal perspective of the protagonist’s subjectivity that places this film

at the junction between a travelogue and a (auto)biographical documentary.
La forma exacta de las islas begins as a road-trip movie. From the framed
perspective of a vehicle in movement, the camera introduces us to an empty
landscape, open fields on both sides of the road, and a group of sheep graz-
ing beneath a gray sky. At the bottom of the frame, a subtitle situates us in
December 2006, while the car radio relates a story about a war with Argentine
soldiers. In the next scene, through the window of a hotel room, the video
camera tries to zoom in on a figure that stands against the horizon. The voice
of the woman holding the camera tells us that the view is from the Two Sisters
Mountain. These two early scenes invite us to draw closer to islands whose
shape the film’s title mentions but that we cannot completely recognize as a
geographical space. Instead of using a high wide angle or a panoramic shot
that would give a general but stable idea of the territory, the documentary
introduces the islands from the car, with a ground-level, moving camera that
gives us partial landscape images through a windshield. In her book Atlas of
Emotion, Giuliana Bruno proposes that every film is a travelogue, because
“there is a mobile dynamics involved in the act of viewing films, even if
the spectator is seemingly static. The (im)mobile spectator moves across an
imaginary path, traversing multiple sites and times. Her fictional navigation
connects distant moments and far-apart places” (55-56). During its eighty-
five minutes, La forma exacta de las islas invites us to travel through islands
we do not know firsthand but whose fuzzy boundaries lie somewhere in our
historical and affective memory.
The travel diary as a particular genre also evokes the journey in a broad
sense. It is an exploration of an unknown land but also a journey of inner
discovery. In this instance, the trip involves the act of mourning for the char-
acters. For Julieta, the making of the film serves as a vehicle for understanding
her feelings of grief. It also serves the reparatory and therapeutic function
that, according to Philippe Lejeune, is implied in any (auto)biographical nar-
rative. If the protagonist returns to the islands to close a traumatic chapter
in her personal history, it is mainly through geographical displacement that
the documentary examines self-reflexively the very possibility of the filmic
form to deal with the watery world of emotions. The usual gesture of many
(auto)biographical films that capture a personal voice by turning the cam-
era inward is duplicated by an outward movement. The operation becomes
cartographic, allowing the film to explore the associations between Julieta’s
mourning process and other experiences of grief, including those of Argentine
SPRING 2017 129
soldiers and the islanders. In this way, in the liminal space of the “deserted
island,” the mourning process rearticulates, from an affective dimension, a
new relationship between the intimate and the public, the present and the
past, private and collective memory.
Islands of Memories
To perceive the landscape is, according to anthropologist Tim Ingold, “to
carry out an act of remembrance and remembering is not so much a matter of
calling up an internal image stored in the mind as of engaging perceptually
with an environment that is itself pregnant with the past” (31). About half-
way through the film, Julieta and her camera follow the veterans who have
journeyed back to the islands to find the positions from which they fought
on the Two Sisters. In their visit to the mountain the past is presented in the
double sense suggested by Ingold. At the beginning of the sequence, Carlos
and Dacio retell their “mental map” of the place, but when they are actually
wandering through the site, the landscape materializes as an environment
that is, just as themselves, marked by history. In the absence of recognizable
monuments and memorials that testify and recall the past, memory seeps into
the fabric of the place and lingers there, resisting time. The mountain tour
of Carlos, Dacio, and Julieta is an immersion in a former battlefield whose
spectral texture shows objects and traces, residues of clothes and military
equipment, silent remains of the violent confrontation that took place there
in June 1982. Near the end of Julieta’s footage, the camera registers Carlos
leaving a marker where one of his friends died. The work of mourning is
entwined with an act of memory as he improvises a cross and plants an Ar-
gentine flag, an intervention that ties together a ritual of private mourning
with the symbols of a public or official memory.
In contrast with the scenes that show Dacio and Carlos’ trip to the moun-
tain and the establishment of a place of memory by land marking, Dieleke and
Casabé follow Julieta in a somewhat distant way. The sequences in which she
silently tours Port Stanley suggest an attunement with the romantic figuration
of self and landscape in which the performance of the solitary walk is central
to the learning experience of the journey that, in this case, is related to the
mourning of her child. If in the first trip memory seeps into the remains of the
battlefield, in the second one Julieta encounters other material manifestations
of memory. The protagonist walks through monuments for remembrance
such as monoliths, official cemeteries, and museums, spaces where loss is
manifested in its public and private face. La forma exacta de las islas explores
Photo: Edgardo Dieleke, Daniel Casabé, and Ajimolido Films.
Julieta’s personal drama against a background of collective trauma. At the

beginning of the film, she visits Port Stanley’s cemetery, and it is only when
she stops at a war memorial for World War I and II veterans that she starts
recalling her 2006 trip. Her almost obsessive meandering around the local
cemetery is also filled with stories of loss and grief narrated by the directors’
voiceovers. In another sequence, rather than telling, the film shows her visit to
the San Carlos Blue Beach Military Cemetery, which holds the remains of 14
of the 255 British casualties from the Falklands War. The camera stops briefly
to contemplate one of the sections with seven graves until, without transition,
we move to the Argentine military cemetery, and a panning shot shows us
graves marked by white wooden crosses, some marked with the name of a
soldier and others marked with “soldado argentino solo conocido por Dios.”
Julieta’s persistent wandering through cemeteries and her visit to the local
museum suggest that, similarly to the archipelago, these micro-spaces within the
islands act as a kind of heterotopia, an “other space” that in Michel Foucault’s
formulation simultaneously represents, contests, and inverts all of the real sites
within a culture. While a utopia exists only as a non-place, a heterotopia “is
capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are
in themselves incompatible” (Foucault 26). These “other spaces” are “linked to
slices in time” that “open onto what might be termed [. . .] heterochronies” (26).
Foucault articulates different ways in which heterotopias cut up time, including
SPRING 2017 131
various degrees of disruption. The cemetery, he states, is the most powerful

example of temporal disruption, as here we are faced with an absolute rupture
of familiar time that becomes strangely permanent. In contrast to these breaks
or gaps in time, the space of the museum expresses the “idea of constituting a
place of all times that is itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages”
(26). Encapsulating temporal discontinuities or accumulating and protecting
all of time in one space, cemeteries and museums also merge the public and
the private and tie together past and present in a common history. Rather than
mere “places of memory” associated with a commemorative logic, in the film,
these spaces articulate a new relationship between informal memory, private
grief, and history.7
The concept of heterotopia allows us also to consider the space of the
islands as presenting an inherent “otherness” that is also, almost paradoxically,
bound up with broader questions of collective trauma and belonging. In this
way, on Julieta’s second return trip, the islands become a space of loss not
only for the generation that lived the 1982 war, but for many others as well.
Apart from the collective damage done to Argentina following its defeat, there
was the damage done to the Falklands. One interviewee explains that after the
conflict, communication with mainland Argentina ceased, which considerably
worsened the sense of isolation of native islanders. Along with the traumas
of the combatants, the film explores the after effects of the war among the
islanders. In a revealing scene, a kelper narrates the traumatic stress disorder
suffered by a woman who confused the 1982 invasion of the Argentine army
with World War II. The collective loss inflicted by the different wars overlaps
with individual losses: that of Dacio, who lost his partner in combat; that of
Rob Yssel, who recounts the tragic and painful loss of his wife, the archivist
of the island; that of a woman who, according to the narrative of the Port
Stanley Museum, lost her six children when a devastating plague hit Stanley
in 1855; and finally that of Julieta and her frustrated motherhood.
Expansion of the Self and Collective Mourning

While the geographical singularity of the islands makes them an excep-
tional place to think about how to cope with pain, the testimonies of those
interviewed, soldiers and islanders, all ultimately function as mirrors for the
experience of the protagonist. These inscriptions of subjectivity in the dis-
course of La forma exacta de las islas are intentional, as they introduce an
affective dimension into the dominant logic of the film’s argument. Subjectiv-
ity is the filter through which the real enters the discourse as well as a kind of
experiential compass that guides the work toward its goal as an “embodied
knowledge” that addresses the spectator and creates the ground for an engage-
ment with a collectivity much larger than the self. Tracing crucial forms of
expression in (auto)biographical films, such as diaries and self-portraits, Paola
Lagos Labbé argues that documentary discourses that expose the intimate are
characterized by an introspective feature, an “ultrasound device,” as different
representational resources look to shape a distinct space, time, and voice that
come together to evoke the “self” (70). Certainly, La forma exacta de las
islas replicates this inward movement, but it also constructs “subjectivity as
a site of instability—flux, drift, perpetual revision—rather than coherence”
(Renov 110). Alhough the audience enters the islands aligned with Julieta’s
subject position, the film proposes to navigate the archipelago as an in-between
space where the protagonist’s story continually intersects with those of the
islanders. In other words, even if La forma exacta de las islas draws from
different forms of personal expression in recent documentary film, it does so
in order to explore what we can call an expansion of the self.
As a collective endeavor, this cinema of experience uses voiceovers as
a pivotal resource not only to provide structural sense to the film, but also to
modulate subjectivity. Throughout the film, the voiceovers of the directors,
one of whom also appears in person, explain Julieta’s reasons for returning
to the islands and an actress reads excerpts of Julieta’s personal diary, a self-
reflective inclusion on the writer’s part that reveals both the intentions as
well as the difficulties she experienced while making the film. In one scene,
the voice of Dieleke tells us that “Julieta viajó a las Malvinas para terminar
su tesis. Antes de viajar estudió toda la literatura sobre la guerra. Analizó
en detalle novelas como Los pichiciegos de Fogwill y Las islas de Carlos
Gamerro.” Using first person and present tense, an actress’ voice-over reads
Julieta’s travel diary and reinforces what Dieleke said: “Vengo a las Malvinas
para contrastar la versión de la guerra que nos contaron en la escuela, para
contrastar las versiones testimoniales de aquellos que lucharon en 1982.
Vengo para ver cómo este espacio fue imaginado en la literatura y el cine.
Vengo a Malvinas para conocer a los Kelpers.”8 In the hotel room, when
Julieta discusses the film she is making with Dacio and Carlos, one of the
ex-combatants dismantles the objectivity of documentary discourse when
he says, “Vos sos la que está haciendo la película. La película empieza con
vos, empieza allá cuando estás pensando tu tesis,” and, looking at the other
veteran, he reiterates, “La película es sobre ella. Ella tenía seis años cuando
fue la guerra de Malvinas. Ella lleva Malvinas adentro desde que tenía seis
SPRING 2017 133
años.” These few scenes underscore the fragmented and polyphonic nature
of this unconventional documentary. The film proposes a peculiar writing of
the self that contains first-, second-, and third-person narratives. Moreover,
these voices layered together narrate a story that contains autobiographical,
biographical, and historical elements. Slipping back and forth between per-
sonal and historical narrative, the voiceovers overlap fragmentary meditations
on the present and the past of the Falklands, telling a piece of the history of
the islands through the exploration of the characters’ personal trauma.
The primacy of subjectivity in both the intentionality and the organiza-
tion of the narrative is reinforced with the duplication of Julieta’s voice via
voiceovers. The actress who provides them, far from incorporating an omni-
scient commentary, expresses the changing moods, doubts, and desires of the
protagonist. At one point, reading what appears to be a fragment of Julieta’s
journal, the voiceover says: “Cuando la guerra comenzó, yo tenía cinco y
acababa de entrar a primer grado. No tengo memoria del día 2 de abril o del
día de la rendición. Pero sí recuerdo el hundimiento del Belgrano. Creo que
mi mamá me estaba preparando para ir a la escuela. Estábamos en el baño,
con la radio prendida, y ella lloraba mientras escuchábamos las noticias.”
However, it is not the childhood memory that is at the center of this subjec-
tive narrative, but rather a subsequent traumatic event that Julieta discusses
with the directors during the second trip: “Espero que en algún momento
dejemos de seguir los pasos de Carlos y Dacio . . . porque es como vivir sus
experiencias vicariamente. Mi experiencia es otra. Tiene que ver con cosas
que me pasaron después, cuando me fui de Malvinas.” Towards the end of
the film, the female voiceover reads the last entry of the travel journal, writ-
ten a few weeks after Julieta returned to the continent: “En estas islas cabe
la última entrada de mi diario escrita en 2006, pocas semanas después de
regresar al continente. Si un día vuelvo a Malvinas ya no seré la misma. No
seré una, sino dos. Viviré mi maternidad con felicidad y será dulce la espera.
Volveré con un hijo concebido en esas islas. Quizá cuando crezca él decida
visitar ese lugar.” After a pause, the same voiceover reveals the main reason
for making the film: “En el momento de cerrar el diario no sabía que ese
viaje no se realizaría. Al menos no así. Porque mi hijo Eliseo moriría a pocas
horas de nacer. Sin embargo seguirá conmigo su memoria y esa ficción feliz
ligada a mi viaje a las islas.” The voiceover narration re-inscribes the story
of the loss in a new travel journal, that of the film. The return journey to the
islands and the very making of the documentary are part of the process of
coming to terms with that loss and, in this way, the islands turn out to be a
space associated with pain and suffering and also with beauty and consolation.
In the space of the islands, Julieta’s grief enables new attachments and
configurations as she performs the mourning that connects her loss with other
tragedies both personal and collective. In her study of familiar memories,
Annette Kuhn argues that memory work, when properly conceived, folds
public and private spheres into one another: “Memory work makes it pos-
sible to explore connections between ‘public’ historical events, structures of
feeling, family dramas, relations of class, national identity and gender, and
‘personal’ memory. In these case histories outer and inner, social and personal,
historical and psychical, coalesce; and the web of interconnections that binds
them together is made visible” (5). Kuhn’s description of the coalescence of
outer and inner histories describes well a documentary that, by redefining the
reading of the past through subjectivity, finds truths that are partial but also
profoundly embodied and functional for the construction of a closer, warmer
memory that moves from the individual realm to the collective. A second end-
ing to La forma exacta de las islas takes place when the director’s voiceover
says that “así empezaba nuestra película.” A subtitle states that it is April 2,
2007, and the images show us Julieta, happy and pregnant, attending a 25th
anniversary memorial ceremony for the war. In this final scene, the rupture
of temporality retrieves past, aborted projects and re-inscribes the intimate
Photo: Edgardo Dieleke, Daniel Casabé, and Ajimolido Films.

SPRING 2017 135
in the public, making connections between personal tragedies and desires,

collective wounds and projects.
Affective Geography or Thinking Memory through Space

Exploring the relationships between cinema and history, Robert Rosen-
stone proposes in Visions of the Past: the Challenge of Film to Our Idea of
History that affective films are a fruitful alternative to the narrative limitations
of traditional history. Even if it merges different genres of intimacy, such as
personal diaries and self-portraits, La forma exacta de las islas does not narrate
a biography. Instead, it brings together fragments that give a particular look at
a specific moment in Julieta’s life and draws us to the affective dimension of
lived reality and history. Defying the conventional opposition between affect,
discourse, and reason, affectivity becomes in the documentary a condition of
possibility of subjectivity and knowledge. In the film, a complex structure in
which multiple perspectives and voices come together to expose traumatic
situations is interspersed with travel-writing techniques such as the travel-
ogue and the chronicle. Through a fragmented and self-reflective register,
the superimposition of search and return journeys allows the documentary
to reveal the links between personal drama and collective wounds while
maintaining a critical relationship with the past, as the interplay of multiple
trips avoids any sense of closure.
Part mourning documentary, part affective travelogue, La forma exacta de
las islas eludes the nationalist prerogatives and the idea of the “just cause” that
permeate political discourses, testimonies, and historical films and manages,
instead, to pose complex responses to the question of the war’s aftermath. As
a modern cartography, the film is capable of mapping not only the shape of
the islands’ territory, but also the temporal experiences inscribed there. As an
evocation of the temporal shifts that characterize the aftermath of a war, La
forma exacta de las islas thinks memory through space. Mapping experiences
of grief and consolation through narratives of self and space, the film makes
the islands a place of both personal and collective trauma. Julieta’s journey
through ghostly sites of inarticulate and half-understood longing is an act of
mapping haunted spaces that progressively fill with new stories. The film
presents this remote archipelago as a site of memory, an intensive, affective,
even heterotopic space that changes both the characters’ and the viewers’
connection to the land and to personal and collective wounds.
The film also explores how a particular space is involved in consolation.
If the Falklands became a “consolation-scape” it is because the geography
of the islands metaphorically extends to the insular condition of those who

inhabit that terrain, making it possible to think a parallel between the scenery
and the subjectivity of the inhabitants. The audiovisual mapping of the islands
guides us within the insular territory of the subjective experience. To live
in one of the most remote archipelagos in the world is to expose oneself to
a permanent state of vulnerability, precariousness, and resilience. Yearning
and wandering through monuments, memorial sites, and erased spaces and
places inhabited by memories of past violence and tragedy, Julieta exposes
herself to the precarious conditions that will distinguish her affective process
as she negotiates the fallout of acute grief. In the intersection of travelogue
and mourning, psycho-geography comes to function as a memorial site, a
collection of places of reclamation and self-discovery, allowing the film to
stage a form of mourning that emerges as a mode of becoming an other. In this
vein, tracing the protagonist’s emotional journey in the aftermath of loss, La
forma exacta de las islas functions as an affective geography that configures
new forms of community through its creative transformation of voices and
places ignored by hegemonic narratives.
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Conicet
Notes
1
For example, Volume 4 of SIWA. Revista de literatura geográfica, “Islarios de todas las islas del
mundo,” is entirely devoted to the fascination with archipelagos in literature.
2
The Malvinas / Falkland Islands consist of two main islands as well as many smaller ones in the
south Atlantic Ocean. The 1982 conflict was triggered by Argentina’s occupation of South Georgia Island
on March 19, 1982, followed by the occupation of the Falklands, and it ended when Argentina surrendered
on June 14, 1982. The initial invasion was considered by Argentina to be the re-occupation of its own
territory and by Great Britain to be an invasion of a British overseas territory. In the period leading up to
the war, Argentina was in the midst of a devastating economic crisis and large-scale civil unrest against
the military junta that had been governing the country since 1976. The Argentine military government,
headed by General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, sought to maintain power by diverting public attention,
playing off long-standing feelings of the Argentines towards the islands, although the junta’s leaders never
thought that the United Kingdom would respond militarily. After combat resulting in 258 British and 649
Argentine deaths, the British eventually prevailed, and the islands remained under British control. The
ensuing fall of the military dictatorship was precipitated by Argentina’s defeat in the conflict.
3
Some of the films analyzed by Israeli scholar Tzvi Tal are La Rosales, directed by David Lipszyc
(1984); Malvinas, historia de traiciones, directed by Jorge Denti (1984); No tan nuestras, directed by
Ramiro Longo (2005); Locos de la bandera, directed by Julio Cardoso (2005); Resurrected, directed by
David Greengrass (1988); and An Ungentlemanly Act, directed by Stuart Urban (1992).
4
Over a century, Argentine public discourse had imagined the islands as two empty spaces on
which to imprint national identity, which explains the massive support the invasion received from the
SPRING 2017 137
entire ideological spectrum. However, the outcome of the war prompted large protests against the ruling
military government, hastening its downfall. Since then, the islands have acquired other undertones. Placed
in a grey zone between dictatorship and democracy, the cause of the “just war” crystallized as part of the
hegemonic discourse but became, at the same time, a shameful event of difficult assimilation.
5
Directed by Edgardo Dieleke and Daniel Casabé. Written by Dieleke, Casabé, and Julieta Vitullo.
Cast: Vitullo, Carlos Enriori, Dacio Agretti, Tony Smith, John Fowler, Rob Yssel, Dieleke, and Casabé.
Voiceover: Dieleke, María Emilia Franchignoni, and Casabé. Texts of the voiceover: Dieleke. Excerpts
from Vitullo’s diary, Fogwill’s Los pichiciegos (1983), and Carlos Gamerro’s Las islas (1998). Fragments
of Vitullo’s dissertation.
6
By “search documentary” I refer to a personal-essay documentary where filmmakers and char-
acters go on journeys of (self) discovery, often triggered by a crisis. La forma exacta de las islas is also a
“mourning film” since the process of making the documentary helps the character to navigate and work
through the grieving process.
7
As I have shown in a previous article, “Paisajes interiores: espacio y afecto en un documental sobre
Malvinas,” what is peculiar to La forma exacta de las islas is that mourning takes a “spatial turn.” The
deciphering of the geographic space of the islands is key in the process of coming to terms with traumatic
events. In the course of the documentary, broken sequences of perfectly framed land- and seascapes act
as a silent commentary on the work of mourning. Exploring self-reflectively the aesthetic and affective
relationships between landscape and self, the film turns the islands into a space, a practiced place that
ultimately allows the finding of a register that escapes the grand narrative and, instead, highlights the
subjective experience of both geography and history.
8
“Kelper” is a term used to refer to inhabitants of the Malvinas/Falklands.
Works Cited
Bruno, Giuliana. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. Verso,
2002.
Casabé, Daniel, and Edgardo Dieleke, directors. La forma exacta de las islas. Aji-
molido Films – Bloco, 2012.
Deleuze, Gilles. “Desert Islands.” Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953-1974).
Semiotexte, 2003, pp. 9-15.
Depetris Chauvin, Irene. “Paisajes interiores: espacio y afecto en un documental
sobre Malvinas.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, vol. 18, 2014,
pp. 47-58.
Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, 1986, pp. 22-27.
Gargiulo, Salvador, Christian Kupchik, Héctor Roque Pitt and Esther Soto, editors.
Siwa. Revista de literatura geográfica (special issue: Islario general de todas
las islas del mundo), vol. 4, 2014.
Ingold, Tim. “The Temporality of the Landscape.” World Archaeology, vol. 25, no.
2, 1993, pp. 24-27.
Kuhn, Annette. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. Verso, 2002.
Lagos Labbé, Paola. “Ecografías del ‘yo’: documental autobiográfico y estrategias
de (auto)representación de la subjetividad.” Comunicación y Medios, vol. 24,
2011, pp. 60-80.
Lejeune, Philippe. On Autobiography. U of Minnesota P, 1988.

Renov, Michael. The Subject of Documentary. U of Minnesota P, 2004.
Rosenstone, Robert. Visions of the Past: the Challenge of Film to Our Idea of His-
tory. Harvard UP, 1998.
Tal, Tzvi. “Malvinas: mito cinematográfico y proyecto de nación.” Biblioteca Virtual
Historia Política. Accessed 20 Aug. 2013.
Vitullo, Julieta. Islas imaginadas: La guerra de Malvinas en la literatura y el cine
argentinos. Corregidor, 2012.
SPRING 2017 139
Escuela de vida: Una conversación con Martín Rejtman y

Federico León1
Cecilia Sosa
¿Una clase de teatro o una teoría de la revolución? Entrenamiento

elemental para actores es una obra pequeña, perfecta, casi imposible. El
resultado de un encuentro impredecible entre dos directores mañosos, ob-
sesivos, casi un milagro surgido por encargo. Extirpada a las burocracias de
un canal oficial, Entrenamiento emergió como pieza anticanon. Con niños
como estrellas y un profesor excéntrico, dueño de saberes inclasificables,
como figura antológica, el film —o mejor, el telefilm— tiene momentos de
imprudencia pasmosos capaces de generar risas incontenibles. Lúdica y a
la vez extrañamente literal, Entrenamiento no es solo una improbable clase
de actuación en sesenta minutos para niños-actores sino una escuela de vida
para todo su público. Convertida en objeto de adoración, años después, la
película se transforma en libro.
Entrenamiento parecería surgir de algún designio fatal de la cultura oficial
argentina. En 2008 un grupo de productores de Canal 7, con Claudio Morgado
a la cabeza, tuvo una idea profética: convocar duplas de directores de teatro
y de cine para armar un trabajo conjunto en televisión. La iniciativa anticipó
un cruce de géneros que hoy sucede de manera casi orgánica en el circuito
local. En total, se formaron once duplas.2 Todas las producciones salieron al
aire salvo una: Entrenamiento….
Entrenamiento podría ser la primera obra sobre estudios de performance
en Argentina, en la que además resuenan solapadamente las personalidades
más veneradas —y golpeadoras— del mundillo teatral local. En sí misma, es
un estatuto ético político sobre la figura del actor contemporáneo y también
una guía apócrifa sobre el advenimiento de un nuevo superhombre.
Empecemos por el prin-

cipio: ¿quién convocó a
quién?
Federico León: Canal 7
llamaba a los directores de
teatro y cada director tenía
que elegir uno de cine. La
lógica de la propuesta era
que el teatro traía la drama-
turgia y el cine la imagen.
Martín Rejtman: Partían
de esa distinción: que al
cine le falta dramaturgia,
que entiende de imagen,
pero que no entiende de
actores. La idea era que el
dramaturgo podía suplir esa
carencia del cine.
León: Tenía ganas de
trabajar con Martín hacía
un montón pero no tenía
Cartel diseñado por Germán Ruiz nada escrito.
Muchos de los proyectos finalmente estrenados fueron concebidos como obras

de teatro que eventualmente se transformaron en telefilms. En el caso de la
dupla León-Rejtman, el proceso tuvo un devenir diferente.
Rejtman: Los proyectos por encargo se suelen hacer rápido, como di-
ciendo, “No voy a desaprovechar una oportunidad para hacer algo creativo y
al mismo tiempo ganar un poco de dinero con una producción ya resuelta”.
Para nosotros fue distinto. Estuvimos un año y medio escribiendo. Teníamos
que encontrar lo que queríamos hacer.
¿Por qué decidieron trabajar con chicos?

Rejtman: Es una idea de Federico. Él decía que no existía una escuela
de teatro en la que a los chicos se les enseñara a hacer una escena de Chéjov,
por ejemplo. Que siempre los hacían jugar y se los trataba como niños. Que
nunca se les enseñaba teatro. Era teatro para niños, como si fuera otra cosa.
León: Como si fuera un género aparte.
SPRING 2017 141
Rejtman: Antes de que surgiera el

proyecto, yo había trabajado en [la
Fundación] PROA como tutor del pro-
yecto de una costarricense que tenía
una niña como protagonista. La llevé a
ensayar escenas a la escuela de teatro
para niños de Nora Moseinco. Ahí vi
algunas clases. Federico después vino
con esta idea.
Los chicos que integran el elenco

tienen trayectorias heterogéneas.
Para empezar, se formaron en es-
cuelas diferentes: un centro cultural
de Parque Chacabuco, la escuela
Martín Rejtman de Moseinco, la de Helena Nesis y
la de Reina Reech. Rejtman y León
fueron a ver muestras a todas las escuelas y después convocaron un casting.
León: El inicio tuvo más que ver con algo que también está presente en
Copacabana, algo que a Martín no le pertenecía; los chicos y Martín son dos
mundos diferentes. No porque haya o no trabajado con chicos antes, sino por
lo que a él le pueda despertar un chico.
Rejtman: En Copacabana saqué prácticamente todo el material en don-
de había niños porque llamaban demasiado la atención. Para mí los chicos
son la espontaneidad y yo estoy acostumbrado al control. Suena medio raro
pero es así. Había que encontrar la manera de controlar la espontaneidad sin
perderla completamente.
León: Había que desarmar un poco esa idea de que un chico es espon-
táneo y entonces hay que aceptar todo lo que nos proponga porque va a ser
imprevisible, fresco. Había una tensión, algo ríspido entre ese material, que
nos proponía una cosa, y nosotros, que teníamos que llevarlo a otro lugar.
Eso estuvo muy presente. Finalmente apareció un terreno común, común a
todos, a Martín, a los chicos, a Arenillas, a nosotros.
Sin duda, ese imponderable profesor, reconcentrado y extremo, que burla

y hace estallar estereotipos, encarnado por Fabián Arenillas, es una de las
grandes invenciones de la película. Rejtman había trabajado con él en Los
guantes mágicos y le gusta definirlo como “alguien que está en el mundo del
teatro desde antes del nuevo teatro argentino”.
Rejtman: Antes de venir al set, los chicos estaban medio enloquecidos; las
chicas en un camarín y los chicos en otro. Cuando los juntábamos para hacer
las escenas grupales era un caos. Tuvimos momentos de gritos desaforados
para tratar de contenerlos. Cada miembro del equipo tuvo su escena.
León: Y al mismo tiempo los chicos se entusiasmaron y conectaron. Hubo
algo que se transmitió. Hubo un encuentro. Los chicos tenían dos directores
y cada uno armó con ellos una relación muy diferente.
¿En qué difería la relación de cada uno con los chicos?

León: Y… Martín les llevaba regalos, globos…
Rejtman: Los llevaba al zoológico (risas).
León: Se sigue viendo con todos (risas).
De todas las duplas convocadas, Entrenamiento tal vez sea la que más ajusta-
damente respondió a la consigna. Puso literalmente en escena ese encuentro
entre cine y teatro que configuraba la propuesta original. El resultado es un
ensamble perturbador donde ambos géneros comparecen en una comunión
siempre desencajada.
Rejtman: La primera escena de la película muestra a los chicos en sus ca-
sas haciendo ejercicios; la última es un videomontaje que parece espiar la vida
cotidiana del profesor. Entre esas dos puntas está tematizada la convivencia.
La sorprendente concurrencia de géneros que propone Entrenamiento po-

dría leerse como una teoría sobre el teatro y el cine argentinos, como una
intervención crítica sobre los modos de hacer arte o como un seudomanual
de actuación que dialoga con cierta gestualidad masona de la comunidad
intelectual local.
León: Partimos de un imaginario que tiene que ver con el teatro pero
que en algún momento también lo trascendió. También hubo muchas charlas
sobre yoga. La película fue una mirada sobre otras películas, sobre el teatro,
sobre el arte en general y también sobre nuestras conversaciones acerca de
todo eso. En un momento un título posible era Conversaciones sobre el arte.
Rejtman: Un poco pretencioso.
León: Era una cierta subjetiva del profesor, como si él hubiera elegido
ese título.
SPRING 2017 143
Rejtman: También hubo otro título que era ¿Cuántos años vamos a tener?
Fue una de las frases que salió de uno de los chicos en los ensayos.
León: Uno de los chicos preguntó cuántos años iban a tener ellos en la
película.
Rejtman: El título final parafrasea el libro de Paul Hindemith Entrena-
miento elemental para músicos.
En Entrenamiento lo físico parece

estar siempre en primer plano. Al
comienzo del telefilm, el profesor
muestra en clase una escena de
Ponette (1996), aquella película
francesa dirigida por Jacques
Doillon que cuenta la historia de
una niña huérfana que perdió a su
madre en un accidente de auto. En
la escena elegida, Ponette llora en
una iglesia. Tiene un brazo roto.
El profesor realiza una disección
milimétrica de ese llanto frente a
sus alumnos. Hay una atención
Federico León biologicista, casi darwiniana, por
el detalle que prescinde de todo
sentimentalismo. Una estética de la literalidad y una apuesta por la mímesis
como detonante de la metamorfosis que supone todo aprendizaje. Uno a uno,
los chicos repiten la escena usando el cabestrillo de brazo roto.
León: Todos los ejercicios que están en la película se hicieron. Los ensayos
eran eso: no tanto ensayar escenas o cierto guión sino hacer los ejercicios.
Hay ejercicios de yoga, otros de mis profesores de teatro y otros inventados.
También hay algunos de los que hago en mis clases —el de la visualización,
por ejemplo, que trabaja sobre los recuerdos conducidos. También hay otros
que Martín había visto en la escuela de Moseinco, como el de la entrada y
salida de la puerta. El ejercicio de la escalera es un clásico de Norman Briski.
Rejtman: El ejercicio de la escalera se hizo mucho durante los ensayos.
La diferencia grande para mí fueron los ensayos. Yo no improviso nunca.
Parto de un guión y lo que hago es poner en escena esa idea. En este caso
hubo mucho trabajo de ensayo con los chicos y con Fabián. También muchas
improvisaciones. En un punto yo decía, “Basta, no quiero ensayar más”.
Federico siempre decía que había que seguir, que íbamos a encontrar cosas
nuevas. Era una aproximación diferente.
León: Hubo algo muy real en la película: el proceso más allá del guión se
atravesó con los chicos. Había que silenciarlos, lograr que estuvieran concen-
trados, entendiendo. Hay un ejercicio que consiste simplemente en quedarse
parados. Los chicos se quedan quietos sin hacer nada. Y todos se pelean por
participar. No sé si eso estaba en el guión. Los chicos estaban en un estado
de excitación general. Fue mantener algo de ellos al servicio de otra cosa.
Rejtman: Tal vez por eso tanta gente toma la película como un documental.
Los chicos tienen sus nombres reales y los padres de los chicos son los padres
de los chicos. Las primeras escenas las filmamos en la casa de ellos y el final
es en la casa de Arenillas. Pero todo está absolutamente ficcionalizado. Una
vez presenté Entrenamiento junto con Copacabana y tuve que aclarar que
una película era un documental y la otra no. Genera esa ambigüedad.
León: En España pasó lo mismo. Se mostró en una escuela de teatro como
parte de un festival. El comentario general fue “qué bueno el documental”.
Rejtman: Como si las clases fueran clases de teatro reales.
León: En la película hay una teoría sobre el teatro que nosotros comparti-
mos y en muchos de los casos tiene que ver con el imaginario que estábamos
construyendo entre nosotros.
Rejtman: De allí armamos algo que no existe: clases improbables en
las que el profesor habla con los chicos como si fueran adultos o gente con
formación universitaria.
León: La premisa es que son un grupo avanzado, un tercero o cuarto año
de algo. La película arranca empezada; sigue un proceso particular de un grupo
de personas que están juntas hace un montón de tiempo. Los chicos están
totalmente sintonizados con esa forma de trabajo. La de Sofía es una mirada
nueva sobre ese mundo, es la que no encaja, la que no funciona dentro de ese
sistema. Es un estereotipo —la chica de la televisión, la rubiecita, la efectiva.
Rejtman: Alguien me contó que estaba en la cola del BAFICI [Buenos
Aires Festival Internacional de Cine independiente] y una chica rubia se acercó
con su mamá y pidió entradas para Entrenamiento. El pibe de la boletería
le dijo que la película se había proyectado hacía tres años, pero ella insistía:
“Cómo puede ser, por lo menos el DVD deberían tener”, decía.
León: ¿Era Sofía?
Sí, era Sofía, la pequeña estrella, la imagen del histrionismo. Sofía es también
la niña-actriz que, en una de las escenas más hilarantes de la película, cae
SPRING 2017 145
estrepitosamente por la escalera briskiana, como puesta en acto del derrumbe

perfecto, escandaloso, de todo virtuosismo. Después de todo, Entrenamiento
no premia a la élite sino una experiencia, una disciplina, casi una gimnasia.
Tal vez por eso el entrenamiento es casi revolucionario.
¿Cómo fue trabajar en Canal 7?

León: Fue lo más complicado. Incluso para los productores que lo pen-
saron. Ellos tenían una charla con nosotros y después la realidad era otra.
Eso atentaba contra la calidad de la obra.
Rejtman: Cuando empezamos a conocer el canal y a ver cómo funcio-
naba, nos preguntamos si era posible hacer esta película ahí o si teníamos
que probar otra cosa. Para mí lo más interesante fue hacer televisión. Había
un clima muy adverso. A veces sentíamos que había algo de conspiración,
que estaban esperando que todo saliera mal. Había miradas, comentarios,
una sorna constante, un deseo de que todo fracasara. Sentimos un desprecio
por estar haciendo algo diferente al noticiero. No tanto en lo temático o en
lo artístico sino en los procedimientos. Nosotros veníamos a interrumpir un
ritmo y una especie de abulia que se vive en ese lugar. Tuvimos escenas ho-
rribles con un montón de gente. Hubo escenas de gritos con la escenógrafa.
Nuestra productora lloraba. Hubo momentos muy violentos.
León: La dinámica la fuimos encontrando estando ahí adentro. Dirigíamos
desde atrás del set, con micrófono. Era rarísimo. Una forma de trabajo que
no tenía nada que ver con lo que yo estaba acostumbrado, que era estar ahí,
con los cuerpos. Había mucha distancia. Pero en algún momento empezó a
funcionar.
Rejtman: La construcción del espacio fue interesante. Uno no se cues-
tiona mucho esa sala, un espacio negro, neutro. Nosotros queríamos grabar
en una sala chica del teatro IFT pero no pudimos. Un momento que a mí me
gustó mucho fue cuando tomamos la decisión de reproducir esa sala del IFT
en el canal. El mismo proyecto nos llevó a otro lugar, no creíamos que eso
iba a ser posible.
León: Filmamos todo en diez días. No podíamos superar la cantidad de
horas que se puede filmar con chicos. Todo se hizo a un ritmo muy distinto
al que hubiéramos elegido nosotros.
Rejtman: Por diez días vivimos ahí adentro. Hicimos todo en el canal,
salvo el video de Arenillas, que lo filmamos por separado con un equipo
totalmente distinto.
El proyecto fue terminado para Canal 7. Tal vez obedeciendo a algún des-
tino superior, nunca se estrenó. La película se mostró por primera vez en el
BAFICI 2009 en una función con los padres y los chicos.
Rejtman: Aplaudieron como locos, ¿te acordás? Fue una función genial.
León: Sí, fue muy buena.
Rejtman: Los chicos estaban enloquecidos. Habían estado esperando el
estreno durante mucho tiempo. Los estrenos son siempre un poco así. Ellos
estaban a los gritos.
León: Además estaban más grandes. Hacía mucho que no los veíamos.
Luego de aquel breve paso por el endogámico y autocelebratorio festival

porteño, Entrenamiento finalmente se estrenó en El Camarín de las Musas,
una clásica sede del teatro independiente en el barrio del Abasto. La sala
elegida resultó la coronación perfecta para el diálogo de géneros que propone
la película: un cine dentro de un teatro. Acompañando y amplificando las
resonancias documentales del telefilm para la proyección —o tal vez habría
que decir función— el público debía acomodarse en gradas muy parecidas
a las que ocupan los jóvenes apréndices durante los encuentros con su gurú.
Luego de cuatro meses, la película se transformó en objeto de culto, y no
solo en el mundillo cinéfilo y teatral.
Rejtman: Siempre que se muestra la película hay algo bueno en las pro-
yecciones; generan un clima interesante. En algún momento pensamos hacer
un taller de cine para chicos con la película.
Entrenamiento tiene un efecto expansivo; funciona casi como un entrena-

miento para su propio público.
Rejtman: La ves y salís actor (risas). En la película se habla en algún
momento de la risa idiota del público, de cómo sobreactúa. En el BAFICI
o en el Malba el público se ríe el doble que en una función de cine normal.
Hay algo de querer mostrar que sos cómplice en eso. Entrenamiento pone al
espectador en su lugar, o al menos intenta cambiarlo de lugar.
León: El público se ríe pero también ve gente trabajando en algo serio.
Hablábamos bastante de ese método radical, casi utópico. También tiene algo
de viejo en algún sentido, como de los sesenta o setenta, algo de ese espíritu
revolucionario. En algún sentido es una película que todavía cree que puede
transformar a las personas.
Rejtman: Creo que el humor reside en parte en el contraste entre la
seriedad del profesor y los chicos. Uno no está acostumbrado a eso. Algu-
SPRING 2017 147
nas cosas resultaron más graciosas de lo que pensábamos. Lo peculiar de

Entrenamiento es que el humor está presente todo el tiempo pero no es una
comedia; el registro es otro.
León: También hablábamos de la idiosincrasia del profesor de teatro
argentino. Hay algo tan estricto que hasta hace pensar en Kung Fu. El que
vive ese proceso tiene muchos momentos de crisis; no sabe bien adónde lo
va a llevar todo eso. El profesor, con su silencio y con su práctica, le pide
que confíe. Hay un diálogo con esas idiosincrasias, con ese funcionamiento
e imaginario. Cuando avanzábamos, había una mirada algo extraterrestre de
Martín. Él conectaba por otro lado. Eso estaba bueno; lo sacaba de aquello
más anecdótico de reconocer a nuestros profesores de teatro.
Rejtman: Yo no tenía ese preconcepto porque es algo que no conozco.
León: Martín lo relacionaba más con el yoga, como un tipo de enseñanza
o de relación. Discutimos bastante sobre eso y el cruce fue bueno.
Los diálogos con técnicas del yoga incorporaron nuevos desafíos para los
jóvenes actores. “Relajen los dientes”, pide el maestro al final de una de
sus clases.
Rejtman: Siempre hay un momento donde el instructor de yoga te pide
que relajes algo imposible.
En 1918, el filósofo alemán Walter Benjamin escribió Programa de un teatro

infantil proletario. Eran tiempos de comunismo y de guerra y Benjamin vis-
lumbraba el inicio de un fin: el germen de otro mundo posible. El texto fue
escrito a pedido. La destinataria era Asja Lacis, una revolucionaria nacida
en Letonia, fundadora de un teatro infantil en Orel que buscaba darle fun-
damento teórico a su labor. El filósofo, se dice que por amor, aceptó. El texto
tuvo dos versiones: la primera, aparentemente incomprensible; la segunda,
encontrada entre las obras póstumas del autor y con solo cinco páginas.
En aquel extraño programa-manifiesto, Benjamin escribe que el teatro es el
ámbito por excelencia de formación del niño revolucionario: “Nada consi-
dera la burguesía más peligrosa para los niños que el teatro”. Y también:
“El teatro, por ser arte perecedero, es infantil”.
Casi un siglo después, Entrenamiento pareciera reescribir aquel texto revolu-

cionario. De algún modo, el telefilm también funciona como un manifiesto que,
antes que formar actores, parecería fundar una nueva especie de lo humano.
Algunas de sus máximas son sorprendentes: “Con hambre y con frío no se
puede actuar”; “El dolor está por encima del miedo”; “La gran ventaja de
un niño es que es el único que puede hacer de niño con naturalidad. Por lo
tanto, sus grandes competidores son los animales”; “Hay que desprenderse
de lo que ya sabemos. Hay que probar otras caídas”; “El virtuosismo pue-
de arruinar no solamente a un actor; también puede arruinar una vida”;
y hasta “Aprendan a no ser únicamente protagonistas. Sobreactúen el rol
secundario”. En los imperativos categóricos de Entrenamiento parece resonar
un programa revolucionario proyectado al futuro: un materialismo radical
basado en el cuerpo, sus afectos y sensaciones más primarias. En fin, otra
relación con el mundo.
León: Algo que estaba presente en nuestras charlas era cómo formar
personas. Algunas de las cosas que se prueban en la clase tienen que ver con
cosas que a mí me gustaría probar en la vida. Tal vez sea algo que tenga que
ver con la tolerancia —si me pegan, no pego—, con aceptar, con escuchar, con
no hacer las cosas como me parece que deberían ser sino entregarme a lo que
sucede. Creo que eso es tanto para el teatro como para el cine y para la vida.
Más que una película sobre el oficio de la actuación, Entrenamiento aparece

como manifiesto sobre los cruces entre teatro y vida. En esa clave, dialoga con
saberes que no solo forman parte del mundo teatral sino de los más amplios
mundos de pertenencia social y afectiva. De modo incierto sugiere que los
cuerpos saben más allá de su propia voluntad y que ese saber preindividual
y preverbal tiene que ver con la acumulación, con el contacto y hasta con
cierta forma de contagio —eso que en la película aparece como el “cuerpo
intuitivo”.
Rejtman: Me gusta la escena donde uno de los chicos dice, “¿Ya estamos
actuando, profesor, en todo lo que hacemos?” El profesor pide repetir la es-
cena. Les dice, “Vos hacés de mí y vos hacés de vos”. Me gusta que tuvieran
que memorizar la letra y repetir esa escena, que es simplemente un cambio
de rol. El profesor cierra diciendo, “Hoy terminamos acá”. El broche de oro
es la mirada entre ellos: los chicos miran el reloj como diciendo, “¿cómo, ya
terminamos?” Como si fuera el cierre de una sesión de análisis lacaniano.
Los jóvenes apréndices conducidos a un punto crítico de análisis, parten

meditabundos.
Rejtman: Exacto.
León: En esa escena uno ve algo en tiempo presente. Las clases de
Arenillas suelen ser más retóricas, como el enunciado de una teoría. Pero en
SPRING 2017 149
esta otra escena de pronto ves el proceso; no se alude a otra cosa sino que lo
estás viendo ahí. Pasa algo parecido en la escena en la que Matías baila. Es
una intervención muy concreta, un chico aparentemente muy tímido que a
partir de un ejercicio logra liberarse. La película lo muestra en tiempo real.
Quizás el contrapunto de todo aquello sea la clase en la que Carlos Portaluppi

sorprende como profesor reemplazante y el programa radical del niño-hombre
nuevo se diluye en una sucesión de lugares comunes. La escena abre con
una suerte de casting en el que cada niño-actor se presenta, listando nombre
y edad y reponiendo un estado de normalidad que, a fuerza de contraste,
aparece como puro gesto vacío.
León: Todos participamos alguna vez de algún taller donde en algún
momento hay que presentarse.3 Es algo universal, no solo específico al teatro.
La clase del profesor invitado es lo que se suele pensar como una típica clase
de teatro para chicos. En cambio, hay algo en la radicalidad de Arenillas que
no contempla las consecuencias de su método.
Rejtman: No hay una negociación con el mundo.
León: Es como si dijera, “Si termino con dos, termino con dos y esos dos
valen más que una escuela de cien alumnos”. No hace algo que funciona: no
hay muestra de fin de año, no hay clases abiertas…
Rejtman: Y habla en un tono amenazante. Por ejemplo, le dice a Sofía,
“Esto que hacés acá no lo va a ver nadie, ¿entendés? Nadie”. Hay algo ex-
tremo en todo eso.
Incluso los padres, inicialmente amotinados ante la ausencia completa de

concesiones, aplausos y reconocimiento público para sus pródigos, terminan
capturados por esa pedagogía tan utópica y experimental como incierta.
León: Algo que vos decías bastante, Martín: no hay nada progresivo.
Rejtman: Claro, es sumergirte directamente en ese mundo. Mi formación
en cine fue un poco así. De chico iba a ver películas a la cinemateca que eran
completamente imposibles de entender para un chico de trece años. Pero las
veía y algo absorbía. Me parece que tiene que ver con esa misma situación.
Como cuando de chico empezás a leer a [Vladimir] Nabokov y te parece que
no entendés, pero a la vez vas aprendiendo un idioma.
León: Las cosas entran un poco por acumulación. Hay una parte tuya que
entiende y eso se va a manifestar con el tiempo. Hubo algo delicado que se
fue encontrando en los ensayos y también durante el montaje. Tenía que ver
con que el profesor no quedara como un loco, que esa relación que construye
con los chicos no fuera simplemente seguir a un tipo enajenado en su propio

proceso. Y eso de alguna manera se logró. Fue algo de la escucha, sobre todo
en el comienzo cuando el profesor les habla de [Lev] Kuleshov y el perro
de [Ivan] Pavlov. Por la manera en que los chicos escuchan, uno puede ver
que el trabajo del profesor está funcionando. Entrenamiento trabaja sobre el
aprendizaje; en algún momento también prescinde del teatro.
¿Cómo eran ustedes de chicos?

Rejtman: Yo tenía el pelo lacio, flequillo. Era muy flaco, como ahora.
Pero también tuve un período que engordé mucho, a los nueve, diez años.
Era gordo, con pelo largo y rulos. En esa época era bastante hippie; además
del pelo largo usaba medallones. También hacía cerámica.
Rejtman no solo moldeaba jarrones en casa de su vecina Beba, a cargo de

las clases.
Rejtman: También iba a una escuela a contra turno que se llamaba Sentir
y Pensar, una escuela mítica en Caballito. Nos pasaban películas, aprendía-
mos a hacer cine; aprendíamos a hacer cosas de adultos. Era una escuela
experimental fundada en 1964 por Lucho Herman, un dibujante y escritor,
dedicado a la docencia informal. La experiencia se extendió hasta 1971. Es-
taba basada en la creatividad, la experimentación y la autogestión. Cuando
salió mi primer libro, Rapado, Lucho me escribió. También iba a aprender
francés y al Collegium Musicum.
León: Yo iba al Labardén cuatro veces por semana. Hacía folclore, tea-
tro, cerámica. Para mí estaba buenísimo. Bailaba El gato, chacareras, tocaba
el bombo. En los actos de la escuela tenía un rol de organizador. Antes del
Cievyc, filmaba con una cámara que tenía mi papá. Los sábados y domingos
hacía películas.
Años más tarde, en 1994, Rejtman y León se conocían en la escuela de cine

y televisión del Cievyc. Rejtman era profesor y León alumno.
Rejtman: Me acuerdo de una presentación de trabajos donde Federico
mostró el suyo. Después se quejó muchísimo diciendo que si le hubiera mos-
trado eso a su familia habría tenido devoluciones mucho más interesantes.
No recuerdo sus trabajos. Cuando fui a ver Cachetazo de campo (1997) fue
una revelación.
León: En el Cievyc yo tenía diecisiete o dieciocho años. Éramos pocos y
no se había armado un grupo de trabajo. Por eso dejé de hacer cine en aquel
SPRING 2017 151
momento. Me parecía importante encontrar un grupo con el que pudiera tener

afinidad, independientemente de lo que estuviera haciendo. En el teatro lo
encontré mucho más rápidamente.
En 2009, después de filmar Entrenamiento, León y Rejtman dieron clases

juntos en la Universidad Di Tella dentro de un programa de formación para
artistas plásticos. La idea partió de un taller que León había dado en el Centro
Cultural Rojas cuando trabajaba en Museo Miguel Ángel Boezzio, un museo
en vida de un excombatiente de Malvinas que también fue el despertar del
ciclo Biodrama creado por Vivi Tellas.
León: En el Rojas había armado un taller de teatro a partir de objetos per-
sonales. Los alumnos tenían que organizar una presentación con esos objetos.
Para el taller del Di Tella, Rejtman y León ampliaron la propuesta original.

Rejtman: Resultó algo totalmente imprevisible. Cada encuentro se arma-
ba en función de lo que había pasado en el anterior. Fue raro y estimulante.
León: Los trabajos tomaron formas muy diferentes. Los objetos y la obra
de un participante se relacionaban de alguna manera con la del otro. Un artista
podía curar la obra de otro participante.
Entrenamiento no solo fue un encuentro de géneros, sino una apuesta al

trabajo en común, casi una teoría sobre la amistad.
Rejtman: Llevó tiempo; fuimos armando distintas cosas. Lo que quedó
en la película son cosas con las que los dos estamos de acuerdo. Hubo un
acuerdo en estar de acuerdo.
León: Trabajar compartiendo fue algo nuevo para mí. En Estrellas había
trabajado con Marcos [Martínez], pero el proceso fue muy distinto. Lo más
difícil fue el final. Había tomas que hacíamos con dirección de Martín y tomas
que hacíamos con dirección mía.
Rejtman: Un día me desperté y me di cuenta de que en una escena Are-
nillas miraba para el lado equivocado. Hubo que volver a filmar.
León: Hay algo sobre la actuación que también compartimos con Martín.
Tiene que ver con un relato que se desarrolla independientemente de lo que el
actor hace o entiende. No es que en las películas de Martín se actúe parecido
a mis obras, pero hay una especie de concepto o idea que está ahí.
Rejtman: Las obras de Federico son todas diferentes. Me parece que la
que más me gusta es El adolescente. Hay una forma de invención caótica que
me atrae mucho, un estado de la obra. Eso es algo que aprendí trabajando con
él: la obra es un estado; no solo los actores están en un determinado estado.

El adolescente remite inmediatamente al estado adolescente, un estado de
caos constante, de creación y descubrimiento al mismo tiempo.
León: Me gustan todas las películas de Martín. Rapado fue la primera
que vi. Fue en la sala Lugones. Yo empezaba a hacer cosas. Fue una película
que me influyó mucho. Encontré algo.
Rejtman: Me acuerdo de que me viniste a hablar. Veías cosas muy coti-
dianas. Me hablaste de la relación con el hermanito.
León: Es raro lo que te queda de algunas películas. A veces son detalles
intrascendentes. De una película de Tsai Ming-liang me acuerdo de la pro-
tagonista colgando el cartel de una inmobiliaria. Cuando en Entrenamiento
los chicos le preguntan al profesor qué actor le gusta, él no sabe qué decir.
Para mí es un poco así: si me preguntás qué películas me gustan, te puedo
nombrar muchas, pero nombrar una es más complicado. Es como si tuviera
que cerrar algo.
Rapado abrió el campo en un sentido muy literal. Su minimalismo extremo,

la ausencia casi de diálogos y su humor lánguido, hasta sombrío, crearon
una poética nueva en el cine argentino. Veinte años después, el tono Rejtman
sigue haciendo escuela. ¿Y ahora?
Rejtman: Ahora estoy con una película, un libro y también con otro pro-
yecto de película. Las películas son embrionarias.4 El libro está casi termina-
do; son tres cuentos largos, medio deformes. Tiene muchos personajes, más
erráticos. La película que quiero filmar este año también tiene algo de eso.
Son historias que van girando de un grupo a otro. Siempre trabajé por grupos
por edad. En Rapado eran adolescentes, Silvia Prieto de veinte y pico, Los
guantes mágicos casi cuarenta. Ahora mezclé todo. Todo es menos redondo.
En el mágico dispositivo de Yo en el futuro y ahora en la extraordinaria mega-

producción de Las multitudes, León también trabajó y trabaja con grupos de
distintas edades —niños, adolescentes, adultos, ancianos—, series biológicas
que se repiten, conjuntos que aparecen exponencialmente reproducibles. Es
una biopolítica de las pasiones humanas donde las generaciones se cruzan
y una nueva forma de ser con otros parecería posible.
León: Las multitudes gira en torno a 120 personas anónimas de distintas
generaciones que empiezan progresivamente a singularizarse. Asistimos a
los encuentros y desencuentros amorosos de una multitud.
SPRING 2017 153
En ese colectivo móvil e incierto que integran los 120 actores en escena,
vibra un principio utópico de la política. En esta desmedida fábula de lo
público se ensaya otro modo de la convivencia, donde lo colectivo se vuelve
extrañamente íntimo. Finalmente, el principio que une esa polis caótica y
desobrada es el amor por el hacer-juntos y también por el teatro. Entre la
multitud, hay también dos niños-actores de Entrenamiento. Uno de ellos, el
genial Julián Zucker, está encargado de guiar actores y público en la cons-
trucción de un pasado y tal vez de un futuro en común.
El final de Entrenamiento es casi una obra autónoma: un video casero donde

el profesor pone en escena su vida. Los alumnos, en una improbable clase
final, por primera vez ven a su maestro en su casa, cepillándose los dientes,
en una fiesta con su novia y hasta dormido como un niño sobre la ropa de
los invitados. ¿Cómo llegaron a ese final?
León: No lo teníamos claro. Íbamos a mostrar un video donde se veía a
Arenillas dando clases a otro grupo de chicos en Chile o en Brasil, haciendo
el ejercicio de la escalera.
Rejtman: Otro final posible era el de Ponette. Teníamos pensado ubicar a
la actriz de la película para que tuviera un diálogo por Skype con los chicos
haciéndole preguntas.
León: La última escena iba a ser ella, Ponette ya grande, saliendo a ca-
minar por París. Habíamos hablado con un amigo director de fotografía que
vive en París para que filmara esas escenas.
Rejtman: Al final, terminamos mostrando al profesor en una situación
en la que no podría haber estado. Lo queríamos a Arenillas caminando por
el microcentro, vestido con un sobretodo elegante, como una persona que
trabaja en la City.
León: Fue una decisión complicada. En la película hay un límite sobre
qué se puede mostrar por afuera de la clase. Tal vez la escena que más cuenta
es la fiesta. Es una fiesta real. Estaba todo el mundo.
Rejtman: El profesor parecería estar actuando de niño. En algún punto
parecía que él hubiera organizado todas esas escenas y que hubiera inventado
un personaje para los chicos.
León: Es su tesis final: el profesor se muestra como actor. Sale del estudio
y al mismo tiempo se mira desde la clase con sus alumnos en un televisor.
Rejtman: En un momento dice, “En la boca tengo una birome”, como si
estuviera mostrando algo genial. Eso también es adoctrinar (risas).
Entrenamiento elemental para actores comenzó como un encuentro de di-

rectores de disciplinas distintas creando una obra nueva para televisión. El
comienzo de una historia en común y el inicio de un mito. Después de años,
registros y sacrilegios varios, aquel proyecto deviene en libro.
León: Me gusta ese cierre. En algún momento teníamos pensado presentar
Entrenamiento con ex-niños-actores contando su experiencia.
Rejtman: La idea era que en cada proyección hubiera un ex-niño-actor
contando su experiencia. Queríamos que cada uno contara cuánto la película
se acercaba o alejaba de su propia historia. Tal vez lo hagamos para la pre-
sentación de este libro.
CONICET-Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero
Notes
1
Esta entrevista fue publicada originalmente en Entrenamiento elemental para actores. La Bestia
Equilátera, 2012.
2
Las duplas de cineastas y teatristas fueron: Albertina Carri/Cristina Banegas; Adrián Caetano/
José María Muscari; Paula de Luque/Ana Alvarado; Rodrigo Moreno/Vivi Tellas; Javier Diment/Luis
Ziembrowski; Gustavo Postiglion/ Norman Briski; Javier Olivera/Rafael Spregelburd; José Glusman/
Ricardo Bartís; Sandra Gugliotta/ Javier Daulte; Diego Lublinsky/ Rubén Szuchmacher y Federico León/
Martín Rejtman.
3
Después del estreno de la película, Rejtman y León dictaron juntos un curso que se llamó “Cómo
presentarse” en la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
4
En 2013 Martín Rejtman publicó su libro “Tres cuentos” y en 2014 estrenó el film “Dos disparos”.
SPRING 2017 155
Afterword: The Transmedial and the Communitarian
Joanna Page
In a seminal text on embodied meaning, Mark Johnson writes, “To dis-

cover how meaning works, we should turn first to gesture, social interaction,
ritual, and art, and only later to linguistic communication” (208). His work
makes a philosophical and scientific contribution to the flourishing field of
embodiment studies, which engage with the material, the sensory, and the
corporeal to explore human (and nonhuman) experience. Such approaches
provide a corrective to the “linguistic turn” that put philosophies of language
in ascendancy for much of the 20th century and presided over the influence of
semiotics in film studies and the dominance of the text in theatre. They have
also shaped a move from studying media’s role in mediation—how images
and discourses are considered to interpose themselves between us and real-
ity—to a focus on mediatization, which describes how media technologies
are transforming modes of subjectivity and sociability.
The cinematic and theatrical productions discussed in this special issue
are often rooted in Argentine traditions, events, and debates, but they also
clearly participate in these broader, transnational shifts in artistic practice and
theory. The strongly transmedial quality of these texts and performances brings
theatre and cinema together with music, poetry, and other arts to produce
heterogeneous spaces of performance, reflection, and critique. In many cases,
the use of theatrical tropes and devices in cinema (especially the rehearsal)
and, conversely, the intrusion of media technologies in theatre (including the
large screens used by Lola Arias, Mariano Pensotti, and Rafael Spregelburd)
act to bring mediality into a close and seemingly paradoxical relationship
with materiality. In cinema, an emphasis on embodied presence, the alea-
tory, the ritualistic, the immediate, and the contingent reasserts that which
seems entirely negated by film as a technique of mechanical reproduction. In
theatre, the use of digital video technologies expands embodied experience
into the virtual and the mediatic, connecting the here-and-now of theatre to
a wider community and to other forms of experience, as it does in Pensotti’s
Los 8 de julio (2002).
The recent emergence in Argentina of such transmedial, reflexive perfor-
mance practices is not without national precedent. Two cinematic examples
from a previous generation in the 1990s may put in relief a couple of key
continuities and differences with the present moment. The use of theatri-
cal devices and performances-within-performances in Fernando Solanas’s
La nube (1998) fractures the mise-en-scène into a heterogeneous space of
performance and critique, drawing on Brechtian techniques to distance the
spectator from any easy emotional identification with the characters. The
film presents an homage to the community-based practices of independent
theatre, neglected by the state and under threat of extinction in the context
of the neoliberal 1990s, with the rise of multiplexes owned by multinational
conglomerates. While the more recent productions discussed in this issue
often articulate a similar critique of the commercialization of art, they share
nothing of La nube’s nostalgia. Despite continued barriers to funding and
constraints on exhibition and distribution, these transmedial performances
manifest a new confidence in the power of art to create communities in the
face of the increasingly privatized spaces of the culture industry.
Lita Stantic’s Un muro de silencio (1993) offers another instructive
comparison from an earlier era, in which actors play actors playing political
activists who were disappeared by the military regime. Rehearsals of the
film-within-the-film do not yield great insight for the director or her actors
into the lives of the disappeared militants they represent, however, reducing
them simply to repeated statements whose motives or actions they cannot
understand. The film as a whole bears witness to a fractured community in
which “todos sabían” what was happening during the dictatorship and in
which relationships are now riven beyond repair. By contrast, works such as
La forma exacta de las islas and Minefield affirm the therapeutic and restor-
ative functions of art as a practice of integration, and its potential to stage real
encounters between past and present, individual and community, private and
public. Importantly, this is not a gesture towards the subsumption of difference
in some kind of watered-down politics of reconciliation; as Arias maintains
with respect to Minefield (2016), there remain crucial points of disagreement
and divergence. Her work stages the (often precarious) triumph of solidarity
over political and cultural differences in a way that does not erase or belittle
them. If the “todos sabían” of El muro de silencio accuses the spectator,
SPRING 2017 157
trapping us in a web of societal complicity, later scenes of Minefield work

in a similar way to interpellate us, eroding the distinction between us and
the veterans on stage. Yet the emphasis of the latter production, as Jordana
Blejmar points out, is on the creative potential for new understanding that
may emerge from the recognition of “our own responsibilities towards that
shared history, its present legacies, and the impossibility of drawing a clear
line between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (119).
Indeed, there is a strong ethical underpinning to many of these projects’
experiments with different methods of sharing experience. It is for this rea-
son, I would suggest, that acting becomes one of the major themes of many
of the productions discussed here, as the actor is someone who consciously
stands in the place of another, adopting his or her perspectives and gestures,
staging an encounter with otherness and an entwining of experiences that
is the basis of ethical practice. The donning of clothes in Fauna (2013) and
Mi vida después (2009) lays bare the nature of this process as an intimate
investment of, and in, the lives of others. The intermingling of personal and
vicarious experience in acting is particularly clear in El loro y el cisne (2013)
and Viola (2012), as it is in Eduardo Coutinho’s Jogo de cena (2007) and
Moscou (2009), Brazilian films that share many concerns with the works of
Alejo Moguillansky and Matías Piñeiro that are explored here.
It is in the intensely communitarian gesture of these recent productions
that I find, along with many of the contributors to this volume, strong reso-
nances with the anti-capitalist discourses and practices that have emerged or
expanded in post-crisis Argentina. These works bear a relationship with the
deliberately amateur, shoestring budget films that inaugurated New Argentine
Cinema in the late 1990s, in which the directors of Bolivia (2001) or Mundo
grúa (1999) had to resort to persuading friends and family to become actors
or to provide shooting locations. But they have made of those friendships a
new form of collaborative practice that extends beyond financial necessity
to create a new transmedial aesthetic and a mode of production that exceeds
or circumvents the purely commercial. They express a radical adherence to
communitarian values in the face of neoliberal individualism. As Blejmar and
Sosa observe in their introduction, many of these productions become “an
exaltation of friendship” (17). They are characterized by a reflexive concern
with performative art, not simply as the expression of the experience of an
individual or a community, but as a crucial process through which the two
are bound together. In many cases, the communitarian thrust of these produc-
tions is embedded precisely in their transmediality, in the forging of relation-
ships between individuals from the worlds of theatre and cinema in order
to engage with other lives and experiences, a process described by Martín
Rejtman and Federico León in the interview transcribed in this issue. While
these productions often exploit the artifice and the spectacle of performance
(eschewing the naturalism and minimalism of New Argentine Cinema), they
are committed to the recovery of affective bonds between actors, characters,
and spectators. This is often achieved through an emphasis on the rehearsal as
a space of encounter in which identities, memories, and practices are shared
and transformed and new communities forged. The inclusion of rehearsal
scenes here does not primarily serve a deconstructive function, puncturing
the narrative with scenes from the “making of” the film or play. Instead, such
scenes point to the very genesis of these productions in spaces of collabora-
tion, friendship, exchange, and intersubjectivity.
These performances are “productive” in the sense defined by Steven Shaviro
in Post-Cinematic Affect, as “they do not represent social processes, so much
as they participate actively in these processes, and help to constitute them”
(2). This emphasis on what film or theatre does rather than what it represents,
what it brings into being rather than what it describes, renders meaningless the
already much-eroded distinction between fiction and documentary, or drama and
autobiography. Both fantasy and history, fiction and truth, may serve the same
aim of the expansion of the self to embrace other stories and experiences. The
productions explored here evince a renewed confidence in the capacity of both
theatre and cinema to become spaces of genuine encounter and experience and
reaffirm their basis in relations of friendship and collaboration that transcend
commercialism. They respond to a broader shift from the political to the ethical
in contemporary art across many contexts, focusing less on questions of ideol-
ogy or the limits of representation and more on the ethical potential of empathy.
Their emphasis on the communitarian rather than the collective marks both the
limits of utopian thinking in post-dictatorship Argentina and the conditions of
the possibility of its resurgence.
Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge
Works Cited
Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding.

U of Chicago P, 2008.
Shaviro, Steven. Post- Cinematic Affect. Zero Books, 2010.
SPRING 2017 159
Entrevista con el dramaturgo, director y compositor argentino

Gonzalo Demaría: “Los opuestos se atraen, no se rechazan”
Jorge Dubatti
Gonzalo Demaría (Buenos Aires, 1970) es uno de los dramaturgos más

originales y destacables del teatro argentino actual. Viene desarrollando un
proyecto dramático y escénico único, al margen de toda moda o fórmula ya
convencionalizada, en el que confluyen sus saberes de historiador, compositor
musical y director de escena. El suyo es un teatro de autor —no de género—
experimental, siempre desafiante y sugestivo. En los últimos años, Demaría
ha sostenido una investigación renovada sobre los territorios diversos de su
mundo artístico propio: La Anticrista y las langostas contra los vírgenes en-
cratitas (2010), El cordero de ojos azules (2011), Conurbano I, La maestra
serial y El diario del Peludo (las tres de 2013), La ogresa de Barracas, El
acto gratuito (2014), Té de ceibo, Deshonrada y Pequeño Circo Casero de
los Hermanos Suárez (2015), Tarascones y sangre, sudor y siliconas (ambas
de 2016), y en temporadas anteriores, Lo que habló el pescado (2004), Novia
con tulipanes (2006) y Cabo Verde (2009), entre otras.
Más allá de la novedad, está la constante del estilo “demariano”. Basta
leer o escuchar un fragmento para reconocer de inmediato a un auténtico De-
maría. ¿Dónde radica esa singularidad? Sus obras son muy diferentes, tanto
temática como formalmente, pero su dramaturgia presenta recurrencias: el
trabajo con la convención teatral consciente, puesta en evidencia con el claro
objetivo de producir en el espectador un efecto recursivo de goce, juego y
reflexión sobre la naturaleza de lo escénico; la refinada elaboración, en dife-
rentes ángulos, de la presencia de lo musical (materia que Demaría domina
en profundidad); la representación dramática como instrumento espiritual,
de reglas específicas, para la indagación de la realidad social inmediata y de
algunos núcleos históricos y transhistóricos de la sociabilidad argentina; la
comicidad en un amplio espectro de registros, de la cita intelectual para unos
pocos conocedores (la risa como un código casi privado entre entendidos que
disfrutan, por ejemplo, de ciertas referencias musicales o al pasado histórico)
al chiste grosero de revista porteña, entre la comedia brillante de salón y el
varieté más negro y bizarro, entretejidos sabia y paroxísticamente con hebras
de absurdo (en su línea social e histórica), farsa, sátira (del discurso solem-
nizante sobre la educación y el periodismo, de las clases altas que controlan
el poder en la Argentina) y pastiche (procedimiento que, a la vez que incita
a la risa como distancia crítica, preserva el efecto de identificación: el reír
“con”, no sólo “de”).
Paralelamente, Demaría publicó una investigación histórica de fuentes: La
revista porteña. Teatro efímero entre dos revoluciones 1890-1930 (Ediciones
del Instituto Nacional del Teatro, 2011), que lo ubica entre los más destacados
historiadores del espectáculo en Latinoamérica. Ganó, además, un Premio de
la Academia Nacional de la Historia con un estudio en colaboración sobre los
árboles genealógicos de los virreyes del Río de la Plata. Es el responsable de
las adaptaciones porteñas de los musicales Chicago, Cabaret y Zorba, y ha
escrito dos novelas: Las Pochoeaters y El club de los vampiros (ambientada
en el siglo XIX, en los años del gobierno de Rosas). Colabora con el argen-
tino Alfredo Arias en Francia y ha escrito obras en inglés, francés e italiano.
Entrevistamos a Demaría sobre las coordenadas generales de su drama-
turgia y específicamente sobre cuatro de sus piezas notables, estrenadas en
los últimos cinco años: El cordero de ojos azules, La maestra serial, El diario
del Peludo y Tarascones, las que reunirá próximamente en un volumen.
En El cordero de ojos azules el animal que da título a la pieza es a la vez
de raíz bíblica y de materialidad muy concreta; es el cordero simbólico del
agnus dei, el “cordero de dios” y un joven asesinado. La obra transcurre en
la Catedral de Buenos Aires, durante la hecatombe de la epidemia de fiebre
amarilla en 1871, con dos personajes que se parapetan dentro de la Catedral
para protegerse: la Canonesa y el Pintor. El cordero es también San Sebastián,
un saltimbanqui, el hijo bastardo de un cura o una alucinación poética, según
se mire. Los otros dos personajes, más realistas y terrenales, ven potenciadas
sus diferencias y su locura ante esta fantasmagoría que viene de la ciudad
muerta. Se trata de una potente variación en la tendencia del teatro argentino
que hemos llamado “el teatro de los muertos”.
La maestra serial es un unipersonal sobre la historia de una docente
descendiente de aquellas educadoras norteamericanas que Sarmiento trajo al
país para generar “civilización” contra la “barbarie”, que vinieron “de Boston
a la bosta”. “Adivine qué día llegó mi bisabuela”, cuenta el personaje. “El
SPRING 2017 161
11 de septiembre del 88. Mire qué signo más siniestro. El mismo día en que
el impulsor de su venida se moría. Y se moría en Paraguay. En la barbarie.
Un rancho precario, sin agua potable, en medio de la selva. ¿Por qué se fue a
morir ahí? PRECISAMENTE: porque su proyecto FRACASÓ”.1 Por sus mé-
todos inadecuados, esta maestra ha sido con justicia dada de baja en su cargo
y decide salir a educar a las calles, donde se topa con cartoneros, travestis,
extranjeros, los que delatan su clasismo, su violencia de género, su desprecio
por lo nacional y su particular xenofobia. La maestra intentará “educar”,
hará cátedra a cielo abierto. Impresentable cátedra callejera: de lengua, de
moral y civismo, de historia, con todos los vicios del tradicionalismo más
conservador. Sarmiento, dice la maestra, “fue muchas veces violento, pero
nunca fue bárbaro”. Y ella también. De allí el calificativo que le pone Dema-
ría: “serial”. ¿Puede un maestro ser un asesino serial? ¿Se puede matar con
palabras y enseñanzas? ¿Compiten en su capacidad destructiva la violencia
física y la violencia simbólica? Con inteligente comicidad, Demaría pone en
evidencia las profundas contradicciones y conflictos de la historia argentina
en los planos político, educativo, social, así como el origen de una subjeti-
vidad del pasado que significó muchos males y que aún no ha desaparecido.
Refutando a la maestra, Demaría le da la razón a Walter Benjamin: “Todo
acto de civilización es al mismo tiempo un acto de barbarie”.
En El diario del Peludo Demaría retoma la leyenda según la que, en su
segunda presidencia, a Hipólito Yrigoyen (1852-1933), —máxima figura de
los orígenes del radicalismo, movimiento de base popular surgido a fines
del siglo XIX— ya muy decadente de salud, le escribían y le leían un diario
que sólo incluía buenas noticias sobre su gestión. Muchas de esas noticias
estaban escritas en verso, de allí la expresión popular: “hacer el verso”. La
pieza enfrenta dos posiciones políticas y existenciales, a su vez enlazadas en
lo público y en lo privado: la del periodista que confecciona dicho diario y
la del canillita que lo vende. Son, respectivamente, un fervoroso radical que
cree en la causa yrigoyenista y un joven idealista, hijo de inmigrantes rusos
anarquistas. La obra registra el golpe militar de Uriburu que derriba a Yrigo-
yen, —primer golpe que abre una serie que incluye la dictadura sangrienta de
1976-1983— apoyado por el ingenuo canillita y por vastos sectores populares,
figuras de la falta de conciencia política de lo que vendrá, de la irresponsabili-
dad cívica o de la complicidad civil protofascista con los militares que inician
la aberrante “Década Infame” (los años treinta). Irónicamente el radical le
dice al canillita que se quede tranquilo, que “los milicos se van a ir cuando
ustedes los inviten gentilmente a retirarse”. El diario del Peludo es un Marat/
Sade argentino; coloca dilemáticamente al espectador ante la obligación de

elegir entre la democracia llena de problemas del gobierno de Yrigoyen y la
falsa “esperanza” de salida y cambio que genera el golpe. “¿Qué le pasa a la
gente, —dice el radical— qué carajo le pasa que prefiere marchar en fila con
un milico antes que tenerle paciencia al viejo demócrata, aunque entre decreto
y decreto le tengamos que cambiar los pañales?” La pieza analiza además
el rol del periodismo en 1930, cuando en favor de sus negocios editoriales
y políticos, los diarios no dudan en apoyar el movimiento antidemocrático.
Un símbolo —tomado de la historia— sintetiza el destino de la Argentina
a partir de 1930: la caída al Riachuelo de un tranvía de la Línea 105 con 60
personas, de las que sólo se salvan cuatro. Para la composición de este texto
excelente, Demaría echa mano a sus profundos saberes de historiador.
Finalmente, Tarascones parte del encuentro de cuatro mujeres de clase
alta, quienes han encerrado a la criada paraguaya en su habitación porque la
acusan de “homicidio”. Se otorgan a sí mismas la atribución de enjuiciarla,
y el juego con una máscara paraguaya pondrá en evidencia la violencia de la
subjetividad de la derecha dominante en la Argentina.
¿Cómo nace tu vocación por el teatro? ¿Se dio con otras simultáneas: la
historia, la música, la literatura?
Creo profundamente en la vocación. O, mejor, creo en la vocación en un
sentido místico. No por nada la primera vez que aparece esta palabra en un
autor español —Gonzalo de Berceo, el más antiguo conocido por su nom-
bre— está inserta en un contexto religioso. La vocación —lo sabemos— salva.
Consagra. Y es un enorme alivio cuando aparece en la infancia. Yo escribo
historias desde que supe el alfabeto. O historietas, porque las primerísimas
fueron en forma de comic. La relación entre el comic y el teatro es bastante
obvia, el dibujo como narración, es decir puesto en acción y en secuencia. Así
llené varios cuadernos Rivadavia que todavía conserva mi madre (abogada).
Ahora pienso que la historia —la Historia con mayúscula— ya estaba pre-
sente en ellos. Ese gusto viene de mi padre (también abogado). Titulé a uno
de estos comics “Nerón, Bruto y Cleopatra”, lo que constituía un evidente
anacronismo. La suprema e impune libertad del niño. Los ilustraba yo mis-
mo, y no debí hacerlo del todo mal porque a los ocho o nueve años obtuve
en un concurso de pintura intercolegial el primer premio con un jurado que
incluía a Raúl Soldi. También existe el diploma por ahí. En esto del dibujo
habrá algo de herencia. Mi abuela paterna, Luisa Benvenuto, era una artista
plástica algo conocida en su época, amiga de Quinquela Martín, condecorada
SPRING 2017 163
con la mítica Orden del Tornillo, y quien fuera una de las enviadas a la así
llamada “embajada de pintores argentinos a Europa” en 1964. En cuanto al
teatro puedo invocar a un bisabuelo materno, Joaquín Ortoneda. Nació en
Buenos Aires pero era hijo de catalanes. Integró una compañía infantil por la
década de 1880, cuando en nuestra ciudad empezaba el furor del teatro por
secciones y el género chico. Cantó en varias zarzuelas y realizó giras por el
país y el exterior. Después, la tragedia común del niño artista: cuando pasó a
la adolescencia perdió la gracia. En su caso se volvió empleado de los ferro-
carriles británicos, porque de algún modo inexplicable también era experto
en ingeniería electrónica. Y murió alcohólico, por supuesto, por negar su
vocación, que equivale a negar la identidad. Lo que me lleva nuevamente al
tema de lo sagrado: aquel que no escucha el llamado de la vocación (vocare,
en latín, es llamar) se vuelve loco. Esto no es un pensamiento cristiano; lo
decían los griegos en los tiempos arcaicos de Homero. En el canto tercero de
la Ilíada, cuando Paris se defiende de quien lo culpa por las desgracias que
causó su belleza, lo hace con estos hermosos versos: “Los dones amables de
la dorada Afrodita no me reproches, pues no conviene rechazar a los dioses
sus altas dádivas”. Así que los regalos de los dioses no se rechazan. Hay que
escuchar el llamado. La pintura y la música puedo explicarlos genealógi-
camente. Para la escritura, en cambio, no tengo ningún abuelo a mano, así
que es vocación pura. A menos que me remonte a un antepasado del siglo
XIII como lo es Don Juan Manuel, el mal llamado “infante”, el autor de El
Conde Lucanor, entre otras obras. La genealogía es otra de mis aficiones y
me permitió saber que él es mi vigésimo tercer abuelo por línea materna.
Y con estas ostentosas menciones de Don Juan Manuel y de Homero queda
dicho que mis maestros primeros fueron y son los libros. La selecta biblioteca
paterna en primer lugar, donde leí a escondidas a Poe cuando no tenía ni diez
años, y luego la que formé yo mismo a lo largo de los años.
¿Reconocés constantes, obsesiones, recurrencias, invariantes en tu produc-

ción dramática? ¿Podés plantear una periodización en etapas, fases, épocas?
Tengo la teoría contraria a la del oxímoron: los opuestos se atraen, no se
rechazan. Será por mi insaciable curiosidad de saber, de aprender, que siempre
me interesó la gente bien distinta de mí. Y como estoy un poco hiperalfabe-
tizado, esto se traduce en la sencillez del habla rústica, en la espontaneidad
contraria al formulismo de la retórica. A la barbarie. Estos dos planos de lengua
suelen aparecer, y violentarse mutuamente, en mi teatro: el culto y el popular.
El lenguaje “tumbero” en el caso del Fidelino de Lo que habló el pescado, el
“wachiturro” en el caso del cartonero de La maestra serial, o el lunfardo-gay

propio del “reviente” de los años ochenta en el Urbano/Jorge Oscar Chinchu-
rreta de Conurbano I. Pero refinando la respuesta, este contraste es efecto del
encuentro entre personajes polares, y el choque lingüístico viene por añadi-
dura. Civilización y barbarie, se dirá. Sí, pero intercambiables. Si digo que
estos personajes “bárbaros” aportan algo a sus contrapartes “civilizadas”, es
porque entonces no son una tábula rasa, un pizarrón limpio donde el maestro
de turno escribirá su doctrina. Mis bárbaros son maestros en su propia ley. No
es demagogia, es experiencia personal. La civilización y lo libresco (de lo que
no reniego, porque amo los libros con una pasión un tanto patológica) buscan
su compensación. Por otro lado la historia, ya lo admití, es un elemento que
suele colarse en mi teatro. Repudio el teatro histórico entendido como tal.
Otra cosa es el drama humano común y corriente, por ejemplo los cuernos en
el caso de El diario del Peludo, proyectado sobre una época pasada, con sus
códigos y sus eventos. Esto no es un artificio para despegarse del hoy, ni un
ejercicio estilístico, aunque hay un poco de ambos, sino sobre todo una forma
de reflexionar sobre la condición humana y la condena del hombre a caer
siempre en las mismas trampas. La historia argentina en particular, claro, me
parece muy dramática. De todas maneras, las obras en que aparece este marco
histórico no son tantas: Cabo Verde, a partir del higienismo parapolicial de José
Ingenieros en la década del 20; El cordero de ojos azules, la fiebre amarilla de
1871; El diario del Peludo, la caída de Yrigoyen en 1930.
No sé si puedo reconocer “fases” o “períodos” en mi escritura, pero
diría que uno lo inicia Lo que habló el pescado, cuando me lancé a dirigir
mi propio teatro y a explorar una escritura más íntima. Otro, La Anticrista
y las langostas contra los vírgenes encratitas, en la que ya fui plenamente
consciente de ciertas estrategias, por ejemplo la de escribir en versos medidos
como una forma de protegerme del naturalismo televisivo que afecta a buena
parte de nuestro teatro, autores y actores incluidos, y la de automarginarme
en un espacio periférico, una fábrica tomada por los obreros en un barrio
no céntrico, el Impa, tan desprovisto de tecnología que la iluminamos con
varios centenares de velas por función y unas cuantas antorchas. El piso era
de cemento, así que fiscales de la contravención abstenerse.
¿Cómo trabajás? ¿Cómo suelen ser los procesos de composición? ¿Pensás la

obra como director, como escritor? ¿Tenés métodos o técnicas particulares?
Cuando empiezo a concebir una obra me nutro. Viajo. Me acompaña un
inseparable cuaderno, metido dentro de un inseparable morral. Y varios libros
SPRING 2017 165
de turno. Libros distintos: literatura, ensayos, obras visuales. Música también.

Esto en particular con obras que me exigen la investigación, ya sea por temas
históricos, de lenguaje u otros. Digamos que hago un viaje parecido al que
me gustaría que hiciera el público a su turno. No pienso en actores, aunque
admito que alguna vez se me aparece alguno que otro durante la escritura.
Pero aprendí que puede ser frustrante meterse alguien en la cabeza durante
la escritura. Hay que ser libre. La obra escrita es una cosa, la obra puesta
en escena, otra. Nunca pienso en términos de dirección. Cuando escribía La
Anticrista… me divertí hasta con cierta malicia escribiendo acciones que
ocurrían a orillas de un río, en un granero incendiándose, en el palacio de la
gobernación, en el cielo, etc. Cómo se las va a arreglar el director, pensaba. Y
claro, terminé dirigiéndola yo mismo. La resolución fue ir a contrapelo de lo
escrito y prescindir de todo. Si no podía montarla como una gran producción
de teatro barroco, tipo ópera de Monteverdi en el palacio de Mantua, con
maquinaria del XVII y la mar en coche, entonces había que ir al extremo
opuesto, a un teatro de la precariedad, como lo llamé. La justificación fun-
cionó, porque los versos del texto tuvieron la potencia evocadora suficiente.
¿Vivís del teatro?

Soy un privilegiado porque, al menos en etapas, he podido vivir del tea-
tro. Aunque confieso que esto se debe en buena parte a que trabajé bastante
afuera, principalmente en Francia, también en España. Tuve algunas obras
en la cartelera comercial de Buenos Aires, teatro Maipo incluido, lo cual en
el último tiempo se ha vuelto más y más una rareza para un autor nacional.
Pero soy consciente de que no es nada fácil vivir del teatro para un autor
argentino que trabaja en su país. La televisión, en la que hemos caído casi
todos los de mi generación, en mi caso solo de a ratos, es la salida más obvia.
Las clases, otra. Y de Ezeiza2 ya hablé.
¿Te considerás vinculado a un grupo, tendencia, movimiento, generación?

Durante un tiempo, en mis inicios como autor, tuve una suerte de complejo
con el tema de la pertenencia a un grupo. Soy de la generación del famoso
Caraja-jí, más o menos, y saber que existía una especie de club de autores de
mi edad, una especie de Tabla Redonda, me hacía sentir un excluido. Pronto
entendí que esto era más un valor que una falta. Sé que escribo de una forma muy
personal, aunque esto es una obviedad, porque vale para cualquier “persona”.
Sé que no estoy inscripto ni en el naturalismo que tomó por asalto nuestro teatro
un tiempo atrás, ni en un impostado realismo mágico que también pulula, ni
en ningún otro movimiento. Que mi temática es ajena a nuestra escena aunque

sus personajes sean en el fondo más teatrales que el teatro, como lo son un
Papa (Conurbano I), una vampira (La Anticrista) o un telonero de revista (El
diario del Peludo). Sé también que tengo herramientas perdidas en nuestro
oficio, como lo son la escritura en verso rítmico o la lisa y llana “tradición” del
teatro porteño en la que me pretendo apoyar por momentos. Escribir en otros
idiomas: francés, italiano e inglés, me abrió puertas también.
¿Cómo surgió, de qué imágenes, ideas, cómo fue el proceso de escritura de

El cordero de ojos azules?
Los pequeños apocalipsis de la historia son una atracción morbosa para
mí. La Peste Negra de 1347-1351, que redujo a la mitad la población de Eu-
ropa, por ejemplo. Si uno lee a Boccaccio, que la vivió, o a algunos de los
testigos que dejaron algo escrito, no puede sino conmoverse. Es un mundo
que se acaba. Esa gente vivió el Apocalipsis. Raro privilegio. En la Buenos
Aires de 1871 se dio algo parecido. La fiebre amarilla mató a una barbaridad
de gente. Entre ellos a mi tatarabuela Teresa Demaría. En mi casa contaban
su historia las tías viejas. Que la familia se había ido al campo, a Saladillo,
a raíz de la epidemia, etc. A mí me pareció un escenario ideal para una obra.
Una obra de encierro, de personajes parapetados. ¿Y qué mejor escenario
para esta gente de fe perdida que la Catedral? ¿Qué lugar a la vez más seguro
y más ominoso?
En cuanto a los personajes, se me presentaron solos. Mis lecturas genea-
lógicas me llevaron a la Canonesa, es decir a la amante del viejo Deán de
Buenos Aires en tiempos de Rosas, un sátrapa llamado Felipe de Elortondo.
Monseñor. Ladrón de viejas atribuladas que testaban a su favor. Esta mulata de
armas tomar es fea pero “gauchita”, es decir propensa a los favores sexuales.
Y se cruza con su contrario: un pintor refinado, un esteta en busca de inspi-
ración, perdido en medio de tanta muerte. Porque la ciudad está abandonada
y llena de cadáveres. Este pintor está un poco tomado de distintos artistas de
la época. Él ama la belleza, ella encarna la fealdad y la barbarie. Un tercer
personaje fantástico aparece surgido de la peste: San Sebastián. El hermoso
atleta flechado. Ícono gay, por supuesto. Estos tres personajes, encerrados
en la Catedral sitiada por las ratas y la muerte, me escribieron la obra solos.
¿Qué te pareció la puesta en escena de Luciano Cáceres?

Luciano Cáceres es, para empezar, un amigo. Un querido amigo y un
cómplice artístico. Niño prodigio que se subió al escenario a una edad en
SPRING 2017 167
que otros juegan con autitos, sabe más de teatro que lo que su edad pareciera
indicar. Y ya dije mi necesidad de trabajar con gente amiga, además de talen-
tosa. Él creó un espectáculo bello e impresionante a partir de un texto muy
difícil. Se lo debo. También a Gonzalo Córdova, otro amigo y colaborador
que enriquece mi escritura. Gonzalo hizo una escenografía memorable para
ese espectáculo, con cruces gigantes que pendían sobre la platea amenazando
aplastar a los espectadores. Luciano es muy arriesgado y no siempre comparto
inicialmente sus decisiones, pero las acepto porque confío en él, porque es
bien distinto de mí y eso me estimula. El cordero fue la primera obra mía
que dirigió, a la que siguieron El acto gratuito y Pequeño Circo Casero de
los Hermanos Suárez, que escribí a partir de una fantasía delirante de otros
dos amigos queridos, los actores Luciano Castro y Marco Antonio Caponi,
quienes la protagonizaron. A Luciano Castro le debo la confianza en mí
mismo como director, porque me apoyó en mi primera obra en ese rubro, Lo
que habló el pescado. De paso, hizo un trabajo maravilloso que convenció a
muchos escépticos de que los galanes de televisión no siempre son objetos
incapaces de encarnar. A él, a Adriana Aizenberg y a Esteban Meloni.
Me interesa que te detengas en el personaje del muchacho que aparece

misteriosamente, entre real y fantasmal, entre material y metafísico.
San Sebastián es un santo raro en el devocionario católico. En princi-
pio porque es joven y bello. No un viejo barbado con olor a sahumerio. Es
también un cuerpo herido. Atravesado por flechas, atado a un árbol. Es el
patrono de los atletas. Es decir, una imagen estética importante para un pintor
homosexual, como el personaje de la obra. Y, por tanto, un rival poderoso
para la Canonesa. Es un santo erótico, por supuesto, inspirador de muchos
pintores. También de una obra en verso de Gabriele D’Annunzio, que era
heterosexual pero que para la première parisina confió el rol del santo a una
mujer, la bailarina Ida Rubinstein. O sea que hay algo ambiguo en el per-
sonaje. Algo inquietante. Algo perturbador para un ambiente cerrado como
es la Catedral de Buenos Aires asediada por la peste. Decidí que mi santo
fuera mudo. No sé cómo apareció esto, pero abonó el misterio. La Canonesa
sospecha; para ella, el mudito es la encarnación de la Peste. Para el Pintor,
la de la belleza, que le devuelve la inspiración. Al chico no le queda otra que
el martirio. Quizá sea un lugar común el de la belleza torturada, pero no por
eso es menos trágico ni eficaz.
¿Marca un cambio esta pieza en tu dramaturgia?

El cordero de ojos azules fue importante porque marcó un reconocimiento
de mi escritura en otros ámbitos que los del circuito experimental. La obra
fue programada por el Completo Teatral de Buenos Aires y posteriormente
viajó a España, donde hizo temporada. Esto se lo debo a esa magnífica actriz
que es Leonor Manso, quien la leyó por Luciano Cáceres y la presentó al
entonces director del Teatro San Martín, Alberto Ligaluppi. Leonor, descen-
diente de gallegos, encarnó a una mulata criolla como ninguna otra actriz
argentina podría haberlo hecho. Su actuación fue memorable y contribuyó
al éxito del espectáculo. También las de Carlos Belloso como el Pintor, tan
loco y genial como él, y la de Guillermo Berthold como el santo. Luciano lo
hizo bailar desnudo por todo el escenario, escandalizando a las señoras que
venían esperando una obra culta de teatro histórico. En España se repitió el
estupor, no solo por el santo erótico sino por un texto inesperado y barroco.
Madrid recibió la obra como un producto exótico. Bilbao, como una comedia
desaforada.
¿Cómo nació la imagen, idea o punto de partida de La maestra serial?

El intento inicial fue una novela y se iba a titular La ogresa de Barra-
cas. Como los ogros de los cuentos infantiles de Perrault o de los Hermanos
3
Grimm, esta maestra comía niños, a sus alumnos. Estaba ambientada en el

Buenos Aires de 1888. El año, con su mágico número repetido, no es casual.
Es el mismo en que murió Sarmiento, ícono de nuestra educación, y también
el año en que perpetró sus crímenes Jack el Destripador, reputado hoy como
el primer asesino serial de la historia. Esto último ocurría en Londres, muy
lejos de la Argentina, pero idiomáticamente muy cerca del ideal civilizador
de Sarmiento, el importador de maestras bostonianas, el que llamó al gaucho
de nuestras pampas un outlaw. Además, recordé un pasaje muy divertido de
las memorias de Enrique García Velloso, dramaturgo tan prolífico como poco
estudiado, en el que evoca su debut teatral a los quince años con una opereta.
Nos dice que en la época de su estreno (1895) unos misteriosos crímenes de
mujeres destripadas en una cueva que existía por entonces en el barrio de la
Recoleta, frente al Pilar, habían hecho creer a la población porteña que Jack
se encontraba entre nosotros. “Vellosito” concibió ahí el argumento de su
improbable musical con un destripador chino en la cordillera de los Andes,
¡y después consideramos bizarros a Alfredo Casero o Diego Capusotto! Yo
concebí por mi parte a una maestra norteamericana que llega al Buenos Aires
de los inmigrantes en masa justo el mismo día en que muere su importador.
SPRING 2017 169
Este signo ominoso la enloquece. Y sale a matar a los hijos de esos inmigrantes
que vino a educar y que ahora cree perdidos, porque la obra civilizatoria es
tan vasta que se hace imposible.
La ogresa realizaba su faena por Barracas, donde por la época proliferaban
las curtiembres y los saladeros; pensemos en El matadero de Echeverría. La
novela, que empecé a escribir en forma de diario íntimo, quedó inacabada. Lo
mismo una serie para televisión que concebí poco después, con el personaje
transformado en un profesor de latín de colegio secundario obsesionado con
uno de sus alumnos. Por fin, surgió la idea de mostrar a una descendiente de
aquella ogresa, una bisnieta en quien se habrían preservado los ideales a la vez
civilizatorios y criminales de su antepasada. Desde la actualidad, el proyecto
sarmientino cobra todo su patetismo frente a esta anacrónica maestra, anacró-
nica por lo desencajada que se encuentra en una ciudad a la que percibe como
definitivamente barbarizada. El proyecto que “fracasó” es el de Sarmiento,
pero también el de su bisabuela y quizá el de la ilustrada Generación del 80.
Estamos en el horno, se dice esta mujer. In the oven. Recuperé entonces la
primera persona, solo que el diario íntimo ya no me convenía como recurso
y la forma condensada de un monólogo teatral se me apareció naturalmente,
casi por decantación. El testimonio de esta mujer debía ser de corrido, tenso
y dramático. Como un último fuego artificial disparado en medio de la noche,
desde un barco que se hunde.
¿Qué posición asume la obra respecto del par civilización y barbarie?

Una novela de André Gide, El inmoralista, me sugirió en una oportuni-
dad un ensayo. Tomé muchas notas para él, pero nunca pasé del título, que
creo que es muy bueno: “Elogio de la barbarie”. En un pasaje de su novela,
narrada en primera persona por un erudito que es en verdad un alter ego del
autor, Gide evoca la figura del príncipe ostrogodo Atalarico: “Imaginaba yo
a aquel niño de quince años, sordamente excitado por los godos, rebelándo-
se contra su madre Amalasunta, respingando contra su educación latina, y
rechazando la cultura como un caballo rechaza los arreos que le molestan, y
así, prefiriendo la sociedad goda incivilizada a la del demasiado prudente y
viejo Casiodoro, gozando algunos años, con rudos favoritos de su misma edad,
de una vida violenta, voluptuosa y desenfrenada, para morir a los dieciocho
años, completamente corrompido, embriagado de libertinaje”. Aquí está la
cultura latina, lo viejo, en violencia con la cultura goda, lo nuevo, violencia
que termina no solo con la vida de un joven sino con una dinastía, la de los
reyes ostrogodos de Italia. La anécdota histórica se remonta a Procopio de
Cesarea, un testigo de aquella época de cambios, convulsionada como pocas

y de la que nacerían las modernas naciones, las lenguas romances, en fin, un
mundo nuevo. Procopio no lo podía ver, por supuesto, pero en esa tragedia
individual del joven Atalarico —tironeado por la educación latina de su maes-
tro y por la tradición bárbara de su pueblo, muerto a la edad en que mueren
los amados por los dioses, según Menandro,— Procopio nos condensa toda
la caída del Imperio Romano de Occidente, invasiones bárbaras incluidas. A
través de la muerte de un chico de dieciocho años. Una víctima de esa puja.
Así de violento puede resultar el hecho de civilizar.
Barbarizarse, muchas veces, es un acto de supervivencia. Gide lo intuyó.
Lo puso en práctica consigo mismo, muy conscientemente, sin renunciar por
ello a la literatura; todo lo contrario, haciendo de esta experimentación su
material de escritura. Mi maestra, Miss Miller, también lo hizo; ella confie-
sa repetidamente y casi con orgullo que eligió barbarizarse. Sería el viejo
razonamiento de: si no puedes vencerlos, entonces únete a ellos. El tema es
tan viejo como las civilizaciones. Hoy como ayer nuestras ciudades están en
manos de los bárbaros, como Roma o la Ravena del siglo VI de Atalarico.
Lo advirtió con clarividencia profética Walter Benjamin durante la Segunda
Guerra y, con mayor inminencia, lo certifica hoy Alessandro Baricco. Los
bárbaros están ad portas de nuevo. Es tiempo de mutación. Así que esta
maestra destituida de sus clases tomará las calles como una desposeída más.
Y hará lo que sabe: educar, es decir, matar.
¿Se puede matar con palabras y enseñanzas? ¿Compiten en su capacidad

destructiva la violencia física y la violencia simbólica? ¿Qué es lo que se
mata con las palabras?
No solo las palabras matan: las palabras hieren, que es peor. Esto lo sabe-
mos todos los que alguna vez hemos sufrido por algo cruel que nos dijeron.
Se habla de lengua venenosa o viperina, por ejemplo. Y mucho antes de que
Lacan estudiara el efecto de las palabras en la psiquis, mucho antes de Freud
y de Jung, los griegos escribían maleficios en láminas de bronce, es decir
palabras destinadas a matar. En todo caso, el descubrimiento de esta maestra
es, como ella misma lo llama “el lanzamiento del vocablo técnico”, como
si fuera una lanza o una piedra en una competición olímpica. El bárbaro cae
ante el oxímoron, ante un helenismo o un latinazgo. Me gustaba esta imagen,
un poco mágica, un poco absurda.
SPRING 2017 171
Encontraste en Lucila Gandolfo la actriz ideal para Miss Miller. ¿Qué vínculo
personal y profesional los une?
Con Lucila Gandolfo nos conocemos hace muchos años. Nuestra amistad
se materializó con la llegada de Francisco, su hijo, con otro amigo personal,
Alejandro Granado; me hicieron su padrino. Tiempo atrás yo había dirigido a
Lucila en un pequeño espectáculo de canciones de cabaret porteño. Lo hicimos
poco, pero fue divertido. Cuando en octubre de 2012 escribí el monólogo de
la maestra, Lucila se acercó a mí preguntándome si me interesaba escribirle
precisamente un unipersonal. Su idea era algo musical. Yo entonces pensé
repentinamente en ella para mi monólogo. Por un lado no me entusiasmaba
escribir aquel unipersonal con canciones, por el otro se me ocurrió que esto
podía calzarle como un guante. Con su perfecta dicción inglesa, heredada de
su madre y abuelos escoceses, Lucila ya tenía un plus sobre cualquier otra
actriz. Por el otro, precisamente su entrenamiento musical podía resultar,
como de hecho resultó, beneficioso para este personaje lleno de inflexiones
y manierismos de aula. Lucila, por su parte, entendió que esta era una opor-
tunidad para mostrarse definitivamente como actriz, más que como cantante.
Y es una actriz inteligente.
¿Cómo nació la imagen, idea, o punto de partida de El diario del Peludo?

¿En qué aspectos te “nutriste” para escribirlo?
Escribí El diario del Peludo en un tiempo récord para mí. Fue en menos
de un mes, durante septiembre de 2012. Me aislé en mi casa de las sierras
cordobesas y me volví a Buenos Aires con la obra. Fuera de la lectura de
los muy documentados tres tomos que le dedicó Guillermo Gassió al último
gobierno y a la caída de Yrigoyen, no hice casi investigación previa, excepto
por el episodio del tranvía caído al Riachuelo. Tenía pujando en mi interior
lo mejor que se puede tener: la metáfora bien porteña de “hacer el verso”, es
decir, engañar a alguien con la elegancia de la destreza verbal, que es lo que
ocurrió con el supuesto diario apócrifo lleno de buenas noticias que le leían
al anciano presidente para esconderle la crisis. Este diario debía ser en verso,
como los monólogos de las viejas revistas porteñas.
Es una conocida leyenda, la del diario de Yrigoyen. La escuché por pri-
mera vez de boca de mi viejo, de antigua familia radical. Mi bisabuelo Juan
Claudio Demaría había sido presidente de la originaria Unión Cívica en la
provincia bonaerense, allá por 1893, y un tío de mi padre, Raúl Demaría,
presidió la Cámara de Diputados justamente durante la primera presidencia
de Yrigoyen. No está claro si aquel diario existió, pero la leyenda tiene
alguna base de realidad; Gassió recoge el rumor acerca de un redactor del

diario ultraoficialista La Época que se presentaba cada mañana en la Casa
Rosada para que le dictaran sus editoriales. De esto y de los hábitos huraños
de Yrigoyen, a quien llamaban por ello “Peludo”, como el animal criollo
que se esconde en su cueva por timidez, derivaría el mito de ese diario. Y
el teatro está hecho de mitos. Así que yo tomé esa metáfora y la encarné en
un supuesto Lector de ese diario apócrifo, el Lector del presidente. ¿Cómo
sería este sujeto? ¿Un cínico o un embanderado en la Causa? Esto último me
resultó más dramático. Y entonces hurgué en su vida personal; sin duda algo
andaba mal allí también. Este hombre vivía como su admirado presidente,
encerrado, leyendo noticias falsas, y no podía enterarse de que su mujer lo
engañaba. No quería ver esto como no quería ver tampoco que el gobierno
estaba desgastado. Lógicamente, necesitaba contrastar al patético y ence-
rrado Lector y así introduje la voz de la calle, encarnada en un Canillita, el
pibe que le provee los diarios. En teoría, este muchacho debería apoyar un
gobierno nacional y popular como el del Peludo. Pero ocurre que en 1930
todavía existían restos del anarquismo traído al país por inmigrantes italianos,
catalanes y rusos. Este chico era un hijo de inmigrantes rusos. Lo quise así
para que fuera justamente un hueso duro de roer, para que tuviera verba, para
que confrontara con el Lector.
El peligro siempre es que este tipo de personajes con ideales (lo son uno
y otro) se conviertan en títeres del autor. Creo que escapé de ello mediante
dos estrategias. La primera, en cuanto a la estructura: los monólogos en ver-
so de los editoriales del Lector cortan el naturalismo de los diálogos con el
Canillita. La segunda, el conflicto íntimo en cada uno pasa a primer plano;
la obra no es tanto la epopeya de la caída de Yrigoyen como la modesta tra-
gedia doméstica del cornudo, por un lado, y un dolor de huevos por el otro.
En El diario del Peludo construís una imagen del sistema de fuerzas políticas
e ideológicas antes del primer golpe de Estado y del inicio del proceso que
genera la Década Infame. ¿Cómo se relacionan en ese sentido la historia y
el sistema de personajes de la obra?
Como dije más arriba, los personajes responden en lo ideológico a dos
fuerzas antagónicas propias de la época. El populismo de Yrigoyen es la voz
del Lector. La del Canillita es la del anarquismo traído por la inmigración de
entre fines del XIX y principios del XX, que atentó sin éxito contra la vida del
presidente Quintana, por ejemplo. Para la época del segundo gobierno de Yri-
SPRING 2017 173
goyen el anarquismo se había domesticado bastante, lo que permite suponer

la existencia de este pacífico Canillita, que toca de oído por sus padres rusos.
Cuando uno lee los diarios de la época en sus números cercanos al golpe
de septiembre de 1930, sorprende y hasta choca comprobar que la izquierda
era una de las más encarnizadas oposiciones del gobierno popular. Se dice
incluso que el golpe triunfó gracias al pueblo, porque Uriburu nunca alcanzó
a complotar las fuerzas militares suficientes y porque en su avanzada casi
suicida hacia la Casa de Gobierno se les fueron sumando masas de obreros,
mujeres y niños que hicieron imposible que el ejército leal disparase, como
tenía ordenado, cuando pudo hacerlo, a la altura de Puente Pacífico. Esta
imagen de los obreros y los niños sonriendo mientras marchan con el ejér-
cito explica también a este Canillita. Y es la misma imagen que súbitamente
devuelve la lucidez a ese Lector obnubilado que se engañó a sí mismo y que
ahora se permite con el muchacho una ironía que se adelanta a la historia:
los milicos se van a volver a los cuarteles, cómo no, cuando el pueblo los
invite gentilmente a retirarse.
¿Cómo funciona ese sistema de representación en tanto metáfora del presente

en el estreno, en 2013?
La relación con el presente tiene que darse porque la obra está escrita en el
presente y porque es indudablemente una obra política. Los puntos obvios son
que en ambos casos se trata de una segunda presidencia, que los dos gobiernos
se inscribieron como nacionales y populares, que tanto uno como otro se ca-
racterizaron por una relación conflictiva con la prensa. La caída del tranvía en
el Riachuelo, con sus cincuenta y seis muertos, hace un eco un tanto macabro
con el desastre de trenes de Once, en febrero de 2012. Escribí bajo el impacto
que me causó este hecho. Mi temor mayor al estrenar el espectáculo era cómo
recibiría el público estos paralelos. No me interesaba caer en banderías, porque
para eso hubiera escrito otro tipo de obra, es decir un panfleto. No era esa mi
intención. Quería reflexionar más bien sobre el autoengaño, que es un tema
muy humano y muy universal. Si el Lector queda expuesto como un versero
en sus monólogos, digamos como un manipulador simpático, también es quien
al final, con el golpe consumado, advierte que detrás de los militares hay una
voluntad de revertir el proceso iniciado con la Ley Sáenz Peña, en 1912, que
llevó al pueblo a ejercer su voto con plenitud. No es que esto lo redima de sus
pecados, pero al menos lo muestra como una persona comprometida de verdad
con su causa. El Canillita, con toda sus justas denuncias traídas de la calle,
también se contrapesa al final, un poco tomando la voz de la clase media que
se dice nació justamente bajo la primera presidencia de Yrigoyen, cuando en

medio del caos reclama modestamente un salario y la posibilidad de trabajar
tranquilo. Todos salen perdiendo. Volviendo a mis temores sobre la reacción
del público, debo decir que rápidamente se me transformaron en risa, porque
buena parte de la gente me metió arbitrariamente en una u otra canasta. La
necesidad de mapear el territorio ideológico, que le dicen. Lo que quiere decir
que superé la prueba del panfleto.
En esta obra regresa tu tendencia a titular con nombres de animales. ¿Por

qué esa constante en tu teatro y cómo se relaciona, por ejemplo, con la
comedia clásica?
No solo se cuelan animales en mis títulos, sino que en algunos casos
escribí sobre ellos. Tengo una obra no estrenada —un disparate— que se
llama El extraño caso de la mujer caniche, en el cual una “señora bien” se
vuelve perra, y no en un sentido metafórico. También está aquella obra es-
crita posteriormente con Alfredo Arias y Marie Darrieusecq sobre la novela
de esta última, Truismes, estrenada en París y luego en Madrid, sobre otra
mujer que se metamorfosea en cerdo. A mí me gusta ligar este gusto a los
griegos y a la comedia clásica. Por supuesto, el Aristófanes de Los pájaros,
Las avispas y Las ranas, pero también otros comediógrafos perdidos o con-
servados fragmentariamente como Arquipo y Los peces o Ferécrates y sus
fascinantes Hombres hormiga.
Parece que la intención detrás de esta manía no era la de antropomor-
fizar a los animales o viceversa, como en la fábula moral, sino aprender de
la naturaleza. Otra vez el tema de la civilización y la barbarie como valores
mutuamente influyentes y positivos. De los animales puede aprenderse mucho,
parecen decir los griegos. Yo vengo reuniendo material para una comedia “a
la griega” que se titularía Las hienas, y en la que el coro estaría formado por
“wachiturros” que se han vuelto como ellas y que hoy custodian la frontera
con el inframundo. Se trata de un descenso como el de Orfeo, pero en clave
obviamente política. Es una reconstrucción–reescritura de una comedia per-
dida de Eupolis, Demoi. Algún día.
En El diario del Peludo vos también dirigís. ¿Cómo se vincularon en este

caso dramaturgia y dirección? ¿Implicó reescritura de la pieza, ajustes,
nueva orientación?
Como acostumbro hacer cuando dirijo, llegué al primer día de ensayos
con un texto terminado, pero no definitivo. Me gusta y me parece inteligente
SPRING 2017 175
tomar de lo que los actores proponen. Contaba en este caso con dos persona-
lidades muy disímiles, incluso por un obvio tema de edad y de experiencia:
Fito Yanelli y Victorio D´Alessandro. No pueden ser más distintos, aunque
congeniaron estupendamente. Lo maravilloso para un autor que dirige es ese
proceso en el cual los personajes encarnan (si tiene suerte) en los actores, y
entonces uno ve lo que está de más, lo que los cuerpos en el espacio pueden
decir, lo superfluo. Aliviané el texto sobre todo de retórica, un poco inevitable
en una obra como esta. Cortar siempre es mejor que agregar. Me gusta mucho
cortar texto durante los ensayos, y en este caso corté nada menos que diez
páginas. Los últimos cortes los hice una semana antes de estrenar. Siempre
conté con la buena disposición de los dos, lo que me lleva a ratificar mi
pretensión de trabajar siempre con gente amiga o al menos que conozca. Es
una forma de protegerme. No soy un director, siempre lo aclaro con sincero
pudor. Soy autor que puede dirigir. Entonces necesito gente que colabore y
con la que congenie. Y con la que pueda ir a comer después, como con Fito
y Vico, un cordero a El Cañón de Avellaneda.
¿Cómo surgió, cómo fue el proceso de escritura de Tarascones? ¿Por qué

en verso?
En mis desordenadas lecturas me crucé con un poema de un autor italiano
del siglo XVIII, Parini. Más bien con un pasaje de su obra, conocido como
“La vergine cuccia”, es decir La Cuzquita Virgen. Ya el título promete. Se trata
de una visita a una casa aristocrática donde un joven se enorgullece de ser
vegetariano y la señora de la casa de haber despedido a un criado por patear
a su perrita. El criado y toda su familia mueren de hambre en la calle, pero
la perra ofendida es vengada. Esto del amor por los animales por encima del
amor a los hombres abre muchas perspectivas. Por un lado, está aquella frase
popular de “más conozco a los hombres, más quiero a mi perro”, con la que
todos podemos adherir. Pero deshumanizar al personal de servicio, volverlo
menos que un animal, es una brutalidad muy extendida también. Las señoras
que consienten a sus caniches como a bebés y maltratan al chofer o a la mu-
cama eran mi tema. Decidí contarlo en verso. Versos medidos, perfectamente
rimados, en formas clásicas como las del soneto, el romance, la redondilla,
el ovillejo. Es decir, una forma propia del Siglo de Oro para una trama de
living, con personajes que dicen palabras como “Campari”, “plan social”,
“zombi”, “Punta del Este”. De nuevo la violencia del lenguaje y el cruce.
¿Qué te pareció la puesta del director Ciro Zorzoli y el trabajo deslumbrante

del elenco: Paola Barrientos, Alejandra Flechner, Eugenia Guerty y Susana
Pampín?
Todo empezó con Alejandra Flechner, una animal de actriz, justamente.
Teníamos el deseo de hacer algo juntos. Un día en un bar le leí algo de lo
que estaba trabajando. Le gustó. Ya terminada la obra, Alejandra la acercó al
Cervantes. La leyeron y también a ellos les gustó. Conclusión, que le ofreci-
mos por consenso la dirección a Ciro Zorzoli. Ciro es un tipo muy musical
además de un estupendo director de actores, y eso resultó ideal al verso. Hizo
un trabajo preciosista con el texto y me señaló un par de cuestiones que ocu-
rrían en el final de la versión original que resultaron en mi reescritura de una
parte de la obra. Le reconozco esta lucidez. Así es el teatro, y el dramaturgo
que no lo entienda que se vaya a escribir cuentos o novelas.
Las actrices que completaron el cuarteto de señoras —Paola Barrientos,
Eugenia Guerty y Susana Pampín— fueron fundamentales para el éxito del
espectáculo. Manejan la comedia como ya pocas de su generación lo hacen.
Quizá no lo sepan, pero son herederas naturales de una tradición genial de
capocómicas nacionales que se remonta a la legendaria Orfilia Rico, a princi-
pios de siglo XX, pasando por Felisa Mary, Leonor Rinaldi o Beatriz Bonnet.
El punto de partida de esta reunión de mujeres marca la inscripción de tópicos

de la historia y la sociabilidad de diversos momentos de la vida nacional.
Si no recuerdo mal, la canasta fue un juego inventado en el Río de la Plata.
Es muy nuestro entonces, pero fue adoptado por la alta sociedad europea en
los años 40. Me parece haber oído la palabra en alguna sofisticada canción
de Cole Porter o de Noel Coward. Las señoras porteñas todavía se reúnen
a jugarla. Y a charlar y hacerse confidencias. La noche de mujeres que se
depreden en medio de un living se volvió un género teatral en sí mismo a
partir del éxito de la obra española Brujas, que se puso en Buenos Aires en
los años 80. Siguieron imitaciones más o menos convencionales hasta el día
de hoy. Entonces me propuse tomar este modelo. El hecho de que todo girara
en torno a un caniche asesinado y la forma fuera el verso, me protegieron de
caer en la simple fórmula e ir un poco más allá.
Es maravillosa la introducción de la máscara. ¿Inclusión de lo sobrenatu-

ral desenmascarador o acaso estas mujeres aprovechan esa instancia para
decirse lo que no se pueden decir directamente?
SPRING 2017 177
Las máscaras son teatro, ya se sabe. Pero también son carnaval. Y en el

carnaval vale todo. Un antecedente de esta fiesta pagana eran las Saturnales
de los romanos, donde los esclavos tomaban el lugar de los amos y viceversa.
Esto es lo que pasa en el living de casa de la obra. Solo que estas señoras, que
no quieren a nadie y están un poco locas, entran por momentos en genuina
posesión. Hablan lenguas, se contorsionan. Quién sabe si las máscaras, in-
cluso en el teatro, no son portales de entrada para ciertos espíritus, digamos
teatrales, rituales, incontrolables.
¿Cómo se relacionan Tarascones y, en general, estas obras que analizamos

con la producción de sentido político y una mirada crítica sobre la sociedad
argentina?
La Sociedad de Beneficencia, con todo lo bueno que tienen sus hono-
rables propósitos, fue en nuestro país, como lo es en otros, un pretexto para
brillar socialmente, para crear jerarquías y tiranizar. Hemos conocido por las
crónicas policiales los nombres de ciertas señoras involucradas en crímenes
cometidos en una sociedad de protección animal.
Instituto de Artes del Espectáculo

Universidad de Buenos Aires
Notas
1
Mayúsculas en el texto original de Demaría.
2
Demaría se refiere al Aeropuerto Internacional de la Argentina.
3
Finalmente, bajo este nombre, Demaría escribió una pieza teatral.
SPRING 2017 179
“Esa era la idea: que después, como una receta, quedara esta
confesión”: Entrevista a Ana Correa del Grupo
Cultural Yuyachkani
Elena Guichot Muñoz
Esta entrevista a Ana Correa es sobre Confesiones, acción escénica

unipersonal en la que ensambla vida, obra e historia. El espectador asiste
en directo al proceso de creación de sus personajes, mientras la actriz relata
un momento histórico signado por la violencia política peruana. La actriz
desarrolla en la entrevista la pedagogía del arte, el itinerario que conduce a
la creación de una obra tan original como íntima.
¿Cómo comenzó a estructurarse esta obra? ¿Cómo llegaste a Confesiones?

Yo quería hacer una demostración que se llamaba El viaje de la presencia
al personaje porque justamente era el tema que está en las dos últimas obras
El último ensayo y Con-cierto olvido, y ahora tiene que ver con la que estamos
creando, Cartas a Chimbote, en donde Yuyachkani, —como sus integrantes,
como las personas— está más presente.
Entonces yo empecé. Hice una elección de los personajes a partir de un
ejercicio que habíamos hecho unos cinco años atrás. Hice una improvisa-
ción con varias ropas dentro, y había un personaje encima. Era como una
cebolla que se sacaba las capas, pero también se transformó en metáfora de
ir quitándote las pieles que tienes hasta quedar tú. Me senté con Miguel a
recordar todos los personajes que tenía. Entonces me dijo, “Saca todos en
la sala azul”, y los presenté. Presenté a la gallina, a la tía de Encuentro de
zorros, a ese personaje cómico de Pukllay (que fue un trabajo callejero que
hicimos), la Ashanika, la profesora. Estaban en las sillas once personajes
distintos. Y después finalmente hicimos una selección, y en esa primera
selección yo me vestí completamente, a ver si era posible el ejercicio. Y
efectivamente, empezaron a aparecer los personajes. Decidimos seleccionar
estos que están porque nos permitía hablar de personajes caracterizados en

donde prácticamente yo estoy escondida debajo, hasta ir apareciendo yo, y
hasta quedarme yo.
Cuando ya tenía ese trabajo, empezamos a conversar técnicamente de
cómo se había logrado ese personaje y en qué momento. Entonces me invitan
los del Transit Magadalena Project. El tema del Transit era historias no con-
tadas1. Entonces le hablo a Julia de esta demostración que estaba preparando
con Miguel y me dice: “Ana, si es una demostración que hable de ti, de alguna
historia que tú no has contado en el teatro, tráela; si no, prepara algo de ti”.
Le dije a Miguel: “Hemos hecho esta demostración y yo quiero llevarla,
forzarla, pero el tema es otro”. Entonces Miguel me dice: “A ver, ¿qué no
me has contado de cada personaje? La tía, la borracha santera, tú que vienes
de familia metodista, evangélica, ¿qué hacías sacando una tía santera2?, de
dónde te sale toda esa cosa católica, que tú no tienes, no te he conocido nunca
católica”. Entonces le digo: “Pues yo soy católica, mi abuela me raptó cuando
era niña, porque fui la primera nieta y me bautizó católica. Y nunca me he
sentido mal de comulgar. Nunca me confesé, por esa influencia evangélica
de que no te debes confesar delante de ningún hombre, sino frente a Dios”.
Miguel sí conoció a mi abuela. Mi abuela era curandera. Incluso curó a Teresa,
a varia gente del grupo; les curaba del susto; curaba con huevo. “Y la Paula
¿de dónde se hizo curandera, cómo que católica, si ella era curandera?” Y
entonces empecé a contarle: Mi abuela tenía un cuarto; tenía muchos santos.
Entonces él me iba cuestionando y tomando nota.
Y luego fuimos a la otra mujer, a la Bernardina3, y recordamos lo difícil
que había sido para mí aceptar un cambio en mi estética y cómo la técnica
aparece como respuesta a un momento de crisis. Ahí recordamos ese momen-
to que había sido tan difícil. Fue estando yo con las mujeres en Cusco, en
Cochacui y la fiesta donde se viste al santo. Se le prepara para la nueva fiesta
—no sé si en España hay esa fiesta— pero la cofradía del patrón Santiago va
a la iglesia. Abren la urna que estuvo cerrada todo el año; sacan al santo, que
aquí se le dice patrón, porque era un patrón que había venido de España. Se
le quita la ropa y los mayordomos nuevos traen la nueva ropa. Después de
vestirlo se saca al patrón al frente de la iglesia. Se ponen las bancas, el patrón
toma sol y la gente se sienta alrededor, al costado, en las gradas. Los niños
corren, las mujeres tejen. Se pone comida, cerveza. La cofradía conversa y
todo el pueblo sale a ver al santo. Y la gente comenta: “Qué guapo que está.
Seguro habrá buena cosecha este año. Mira está contento, hasta está sonrien-
do”, o de repente dice: “No, está triste. Mira, frunció el ceño. De repente va
SPRING 2017 181
a caer granizo, o no va a llover”. La gente va interpretando. Y esa fiesta se

llama el Cochacui.
Cuando yo fui al Cochacui con mis compañeros, ¡plum!, me apartaron los
caballeros, sin decirme nada. Yo entendí que tenía que estar con las mujeres,
y descubrí en las mujeres un oficio, una perfección en el limpiar, ornamen-
tar y empoderar. Porque yo vi ese día cómo a ese santo de yesos, con una
ropita ya usada, que está guardado un año hasta de costado, lo desnudaron.
Quedó la coraza con la que llegó en el 1500 y tantos, porque Santiago era el
patrón de Cusco, hasta 1950, que hubo un terremoto y entra el Taitacha, que
en realidad es la última versión del Pachacamac, el dios de los terremotos,
el dios de las profundidades; acá hay una mezcla tremenda. Con algodones
nos permitieron limpiar el rostro, las manos, el cuerpo, y ahí vi al patrón,
como llegó, con dos ángeles en las rodillas. Y por eso entendí que las señoras
levantaban a los niños para que le besaran las rodillas.
Entonces, cuando regreso con la experiencia a contarle a Miguel, me dice:
“¿Qué hiciste? ¿Cómo dialogas eso que hiciste allá con lo que tú haces acá?”
Y empezó una pelea cada día, porque en el montaje Miguel me iba quitando
cosas, y sentí que me quedaba sin nada. Y Miguel me decía, “habita el espacio,
huele, mira, escucha, barre”. Y me tiraba la basura, y me decía, “Barre eso”.
Entonces fue rehacer todo. La mujer que yo había preparado estaba basada
en las señoras con las que yo había hablado. Y de repente la obra, la realidad
del proceso, decide que esa iglesita no quedaba en el barrio de Santiago de
Cusco, que era de la altura de un pueblito que estaba desapareciendo por la
guerra, y que allí ya habíamos averiguado nosotros que donde caía el rayo,
dios Iyapa, ahí se hacía un santuario inca, y encima habían construido una
iglesia en las alturas. Entonces Miguel me dijo, “En las alturas no te sirve esa
ropa”. ¡Me quitó la ropa! La mujer que yo había estado construyendo no era.
Me subí al tercer piso a buscar ropa. Tenía una ropa que me había comprado
en Sicuani, entre Cusco y Puno, con la que yo ya había hecho una acción de
una mujer que vendía anticucho. Y a partir de ahí ya no era una señora fuerte
como la que yo estaba construyendo; era una señora mayor.
En esa obra fui tomando conciencia, porque mientras pasaba lo que pasaba
yo solo sentía odio, rabia, y decía, “Me está destruyendo todo mi trabajo”,
y fui construyendo sin darme cuenta. Incluso estrenamos y yo con un dolor
tremendo, no entendiendo, hasta que entendí. Entonces me permitió darme
cuenta, decirle todo lo que no le había dicho, buscar mis cuadernos, revisar
de nuevo, y darme cuenta de cómo yo lo había tomado a modo personal;
estaba mezclado lo mío, mi manera de ser, mi vehemencia, con el personaje.
Y así fuimos pasando a cada personaje, y fuimos conversando. Yo tengo la

costumbre de escribir; tengo mis cuadernos de las obras, y de esta tengo casi
tres cuadernos, porque el proceso duró dos años y medio. Entonces me era
interesante conversar con Miguel y buscar el cuaderno, y buscar lo que yo
había escrito, dibujado. Y pasé del llanto a la risa, porque Miguel es muy sar-
cástico. Entonces finalmente entramos en un proceso de reírnos, de entender.
Con toda esa conversación, que duró un par de días con Miguel, me fui
al Transit, y lo que hice fue una gran improvisación; abrí mi corazón. Lo
que hice allá fue dividir; fue lo único nuevo que apareció. Puse un masking
tape en el piso; le puse una puerta y me senté al costado. Antes no había esta
separación, porque era la actriz actuando como una demostración muy lúcida
y sistematizada de la técnica aplicada. Pero yo sentía que no podía estar en
el mismo espacio, y le puse la alfombra de Peter Brook, y cada vez que yo
entro acá entro en estado de representación, y aquí yo voy a aguantar en un
costadito, escondidita. Y esa función Julia Varley me la tradujo, porque el
público era fundamentalmente mujeres de muchas partes. Entonces me iba
dando tiempo Julia de ir estructurando lo que iba diciendo, y me iba calmando
porque había momentos en que yo lloraba mucho; las tres o cinco primeras
eran de mucho llanto.
Y regreso y Miguel me dice: “Retomamos, ¿cuándo?” Estábamos en
otra obra; ya pasa un año y viene el Odin, Julia, y le dice Miguel: “¿qué te
pareció?” Y dice Julia: “Estupendo lo que han trabajado con Ana. Solo que
el nombre no va —el viaje de la presencia— para todo lo que ha hecho Ana”.
“Y ¿qué has contado?”, dice Miguel. “¡Lo que descubrí contigo, lo que te
conté!” Y entonces nos íbamos a Ayacucho y Eugenio le dice a Miguel: “Lo
que han hecho vosotros dos es otra cosa. No es una demostración; es una
acción, un espectáculo”. Y entonces me programan para Ayacucho. Felizmente
yo había grabado la voz de la función en el Odin. Lo transcribí toditito y
empecé a mirarlo, a ver mis cuadernos. Lo hice para 3.000 jóvenes de teatro
de Colombia, de Chile, de Ayacucho, mis exalumnos, todos sentados en el
suelo, y yo creo que ahí la obra dio un salto. Lo ordené mejor; lo empaté.
Fue una emoción increíble. Lo vieron mis compañeros por primera vez. Y
ya de ahí empezamos a trabajarlo. Yo tenía mucho miedo de abrirlo más allá
de encuentros. He ido a varias Magdalenas, y lo he presentado ahí, pero las
Magdalenas son un útero, donde el 80 por ciento son mujeres, donde las
cosas se dicen pero hay una protección. Hasta el año pasado en que Miguel
me dice: “Ana, quiero ver cómo está, cómo ha crecido en estos encuentros”.
Lo ajusta; quita algunas cosas, y me dice: “Ya está. Hay que estrenarlo”.
SPRING 2017 183
El proceso ha sido largo; son cinco años, dándose una o dos veces al año,
cuidándola como un bebé, hasta abril que se estrenó. Desde entonces lo hago
en los laboratorios, y esta ida a Colombia ha sido una prueba importante,
porque estaba abierto al público. Yo no le llamaría espectáculo, pero tampoco
es una demostración. Creo que es una acción escénica testimonial. Para el
estreno aparece el nombre Confesiones; el poema es un poema del programa
de Talabot del Odin Theatre, donde estaba ese poema que nos gustó mucho.
Entonces Miguel me sugiere, lo revisamos, y dijimos sí, y se lo dimos a la
enfermera loca que abre la obra, toma la presión, quiere sanar a la gente. Esta
enfermera es tradicional, de Paucartambo, pero la hicimos aparecer en la peor
época de la violencia donde Yuyachkani hace un espectáculo llamado Pukllay
Juguemos, donde invitábamos a los espectadores a jugar, pero todos éramos
doctores, y los hacíamos entrar primero a los consultorios, y les medíamos
el miedo. Les medíamos las contracciones —“¡esa es la bomba de hace tres
días!”— y le dábamos recetas, y los metíamos al teatro a jugar, como una
terapia. Ayudó mucho. Le pusimos al poema un signo de médico, salud, y la
que lo entrega es la enfermera, y seguramente la gente lo guarda en el bolsillo
y luego lo encuentra en la casa. El público entra conmigo y comienza y no
tienen tiempo de leer. Esa era la idea: que después, como una receta, quedara
esta confesión. Y ese más o menos es el proceso de esta obra.
Supongo que lo más difícil es pasar de esa presencia honesta, desnuda, a la

parte de personaje.
Claro, ahí ya después, cuando hemos hecho el montaje con Miguel el
año pasado nos dimos cuenta de que hay una trenza. Hay una estructura del
testimonio trenzado en donde está el testimonio mío como mujer, como hija,
como nieta, como esposa, como madre. Está mi testimonio como actriz, pero
con mi grupo, porque de todos estos personajes ninguno es de un unipersonal.
Todos han nacido con mi grupo, por eso hablo mirando el escenario y pintando.
Cuando hablo de cada mujer, lleno el escenario de todos mis compañeros y
las imágenes que usábamos. Yo siento que cuando entro está pintado; está
sostenido por esto. Y la otra trenza es lo que iba pasando políticamente, que
lo hemos afinado con Miguel, porque nos fuimos dando cuenta de lo que
iba pasando mientras me sucedía todo esto, y finalmente reflexionando con
Miguel, me escribe el último texto: “Después de un largo camino recorrido ha
habido un mutuo aprendizaje de mí hacia mis personajes y de mis personajes
a mí, y cabría preguntarse quién ha acompañado a quién, yo a mis personajes
o mis personajes a mí. En todo caso, siempre una vez más la realidad y la
ficción se volvieron a cruzar en este espacio en que se mezcla el arte con

la vida”. Todo se fue como juntando, y ese último que me hace Miguel yo
siento que engloba todo.
Por eso desde que comienzo hablo del viaje, porque la propuesta era el
viaje de la presencia al personaje. Y lo que a mí me daba línea era el viaje a
otros estados de conciencia: yo de niña frente al viaje de mi papá, los viajes
de Yuyachkani que me llevaron a conocer a la santera.... Todo fueron viajes;
todos están unidos por un viaje. Entonces si yo no hubiera empezado esa
búsqueda, Miguel no hubiera dicho, “después de un largo camino recorri-
do…”. Siento que todo fue necesario, y dentro de ese proceso las Magdalenas
fueron necesarias, y ese Transit de historias no contadas; lo que yo vi allí fue
un aliento tremendo.
Vi un espectáculo de una chica de la India4, que es considerada como
una diosa. Su maestro canta, danza y cuenta las historias sagradas, y ella fue
aprendiendo contra la costumbre, pues el maestro entrenó a la niña mujer.
Y cuando entramos el espacio tiene como un separador de ambiente; está el
ambiente como cerrado; hay un círculo no sé si de tierra, pero era roja. Ella
está sentada…. nos mira, nos mira, nos mira, y de repente se para y abre, y
aparecen unos dibujos preciosos, y de repente empieza a cantar, y se acerca, y
empieza a señalar. Ella estaba contando historias ancestrales con esos dibujos,
y yo sentía que nos estaba develando los secretos no solamente de ella, sino
de sus abuelos, porque a veces uno se avergüenza de los abuelos, sobre todo
aquí en el Perú con los inmigrantes. Los abuelos hablan el castellano, aunque
su lengua sea el quechua, pero se acepta más un norteamericano que habla
mal el castellano que a un inmigrante indígena. El racismo no lo soporta. Pero
es doloroso; pasas por la herida, y la herida es dolorosa, pero si no la abres
no la puedes curar. Entonces yo siento que empiezo a curar cosas que nunca
dije, y me doy cuenta de que todo estaba mezclado, que todo sobrevivía allí.
Es un proceso, y no es un proceso aislado de Yuyachkani, porque Yuyachkani
en los últimos cinco años, en El último ensayo, partimos de nosotros, y aca-
bamos burlándonos de nosotros mismos, pero nos gana el espectáculo. Tiene
las tres cosas: la verdad, el espectáculo y el sarcasmo, y ya no solamente de
nosotros sino también del país, de lo establecido, de los signos. Y luego viene
Con-cierto olvido, en donde nosotros estamos de verdad atrás, en ningún caso
representando, pero en estado de alerta y de armonía con el otro.
Creo que en el teatro no se habla tanto de los procesos que pasa una mujer
a todas las edades. En Confesiones se escucha de verdad la voz de la mujer.
SPRING 2017 185
Los personajes nacen en la creación colectiva, pero son mujeres porque

yo soy mujer. Y si veo la historia plagada de mujeres —la mamá, la abuela,
la presencia de la mujer en el teatro y en la vida— entonces eso también
me gusta. Si bien hay hombres alrededor, no tienen el peso, la presencia del
hombre en otras vidas…. Yo todavía no lo he abierto a mujeres de barrio;
voy a tratar de hacerlo, de ver qué otras lecturas hay con ellas. Ese matiz se
lo ha dado el Magdalena, el haberlo confirmado en esos encuentros úteros
de proyección. Hay una rueda en donde cada una cuenta un proyecto y lo
dice en voz alta, pero ese decirlo te crea un compromiso también. Nadie te
comenta nada, pero ese estar en círculo, que todas te miren con cariño y que
tú te atrevas a decirlo en voz alta, es como traer un sueño o un proyecto que
está en tu cabeza, pasarlo por el corazón y decirlo. Siento que este trabajo
ha transitado por ahí y que ha generado un resultado distinto, como otros de
directoras y actrices que salen de esos encuentros.
La gente joven muy conmovida, que comprende cosas del teatro, com-
pañeras de mi edad sorprendidas por la sinceridad. Luego una vez vinieron
unas amigas de mi promoción y estaban fascinadas con la maestra, porque se
reconocieron en las maestras, y se sintieron liberadas, y dijeron: “Tú tenías que
decirlo, tanto maltrato a tu alma se tenía que develar”. Me han pasado cosas
bien interesantes. Un chico que la vio en Colombia, que estuvo de escolar
en Sin título técnica mixta, me dijo que él entendió la Ashanika. Él se sintió
emocionado de entender cómo había surgido la Ashanika, que no había sido
una búsqueda estética, pareciera como que se hizo una composición mental,
y entonces cuando supo todo el proceso, toda la realidad, todo lo que duró,
dos años, de hablar con las Ashanikas, de ir comprándome las cosas, colgarlo,
bajarlo, hablar... entonces sintió que eso había sido construido en un proceso
y que cada foto tenía la verdad de Vera Lentz, y ahora que no tenía que estar
iluminando los rostros vio los rostros, y fue como volver a ver cosas.
¿Crees que hay una nueva corriente “confesional” en el teatro?

Gente de teatro que descubre una vertiente, creo que va a tejer más. Va a
darle espacio a la persona también, aunque ahora con el Facebook hay como
un mostrar todo, aunque sea a través de las pantallas. Pero, ¿qué verdad es la
que debes compartir o no? ¿Cuándo debes compartir un secreto? ¿Mientras
las cosas maduran y pasan por un proceso?
Me llama la atención la confesión de la mujer. Creo que todas nos sentimos

identificadas en algún momento.
Confesiones no existiría si yo no hubiese estado en el proceso de creación

colectiva, cada mujer que se creó ahí. Es muy difícil que todo ese universo
de esas mujeres sea escrito por una sola persona pensando, escribiendo o
investigando… todo el proceso ha hecho posible que incluso en la creación
colectiva se pueda buscar un sentido, y un entender para la vida, para mejor
vivir, porque finalmente yo con Confesiones quiero vivir mejor, crear mejor.
Quiero estar más clara en mis procesos.
Quizás es lo que dice Eugenio Barba de la creación en grupo: que la labor
que se hace es abrir preguntas, no darte respuestas, ni tampoco presentar nue-
vas alternativas como las únicas. Fuimos militantes de izquierda, y creíamos
en eso, pero después nos dimos cuenta que no, cuando vimos caer cada grupo
político que hemos visto caer a lo largo de estos últimos 43 años, hemos visto
desaparecer muchísimas organizaciones sindicales, partidiarias, hemos visto
transformarse dirigentes de izquierda en derecha, hemos visto todo...incendia-
rios en bomberos, bomberos en incendiarios, gente que creías en ellos como
honestos y eran unos corruptos… Gente de izquierda que pensabas que era
estupenda y que violaban a sus hijos y maltrataban a las mujeres. Todo se ha
derrumbado en estos años. El arte más bien abre preguntas y posibles puertas
o caminos hacia conectar el arte con la sanación. Definitivamente, yo creo
ahora que el arte combate la pobreza, que puede fortalecer identidad, auto-
estima, y que incluso el proceso creativo de una obra de arte, sus ejercicios,
pueden servir para la vida. Si no existiese el arte estaríamos condenados. Han
sobrevivido grupos como Yuyachkani y el arte popular. Mira lo que hacen los
retablistas, los escultores que dan testimonio de la vida en sus retablos, en
sus esculturas. Sacar el miedo y ponerlo ahí, poner memoria y que sobreviva,
si bien efímeramente —porque la obra tiende a desaparecer— cumplirá su
acompañamiento a determinados sectores y después desaparecerá.
Universidad de Sevilla
Notas
1
El festival se titula Stories to Be Told: Historias para ser contadas, y tuvo lugar en el año 2007.
http://www.themagdalenaproject.org/es/node/627
2
Personaje de Encuentro de zorros.
3
Personaje de la obra Santiago.
4
Parvathy Bau. La pieza se llama RADHA BHAV.
SPRING 2017 187
Entrevista a Mario Cantú Toscano
Alfonso Varona
Mario Cantú Toscano nació en Monterrey, capital del estado mexicano

de Nuevo León en 1973. Obtuvo su licenciatura en letras españolas en la
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León
y su doctorado en estudios humanísticos, con una especialidad en ciencia y
cultura, del Instituto Técnico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. A partir
de 1993 se dedica al teatro como actor, director y dramaturgo. Entre sus obras
destacan La doble historia del doctor Fausto (1998), Edipo güey (1999), El
Anticristo (2005), El hombre sin adjetivos (2006), Nocturno de la alcoba
(2009), Barbie Girls, Memorama, La sospecha (2010), Arrojados al mundo
sin cobertor de lana (2012), La pinche india (2013) y Asfixia erótica bajo
la luna de abril (2014).1
Entre los premios que ha recibido, se encuentran el Premio Nacional
Obra de Teatro en 1998 del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y el Gobierno
del Estado de Baja California, y el primer lugar en el Concurso Nacional de
Dramaturgia “Teatro Nuevo” en 2000 de la Sociedad General de Escritores
de México y el Instituto de Cultura de la Ciudad de México. Ha sido becario
del Centro de Escritores de Nuevo León (1997-98) y del Fondo Nacional
para la Cultura y las Artes en el Programa de Residencias Artísticas en el
Extranjero (2011). Participó en el programa de residencia de traducción en el
Lark Play Development Center con la obra Memorama en noviembre 2011.
Ha participado en varias ocasiones en la Semana Internacional de la Dra-
maturgia Contemporánea y en el Festival Nacional de la Joven Dramaturgia
como dramaturgo y codirector artístico.
Como editor, ha sido jefe de ediciones en el Consejo para la Cultura y las
Artes de Nuevo León y editor en el Fondo Editorial de Nuevo León. En su
labor como investigador, destacan: “La dramaturgia de la dramaturgia. Una
aproximación desde las ciencias de la complejidad” (Tramoya, 2011); “La
función dramática en la literatura” (Homo Escenicus, 2013); y La ciencia

en Stanislavski (Paso de Gato, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California y
Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán, 2014). En la actualidad se desempeña
como profesor en la Facultad de Artes de la Universidad Autónoma de Baja
California.
La presente entrevista se realizó en mayor parte en el restaurante Mariscos
Popotla Jr., en Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, y en el trayecto de Playas
de Rosarito, rumbo al aeropuerto internacional de Tijuana, Baja California,
el 1 de agosto de 2015.
1ª parte. Formación, obra dramatúrgica general

Mi primera pregunta es en relación a las ciudades donde has desarrollado
tu carrera: inicialmente Monterrey, y después Tijuana. ¿Cuál fue el motivo
de tu mudanza a Tijuana?
El venir a Tijuana obedeció sobretodo a motivos de trabajo. Terminé el
doctorado, y no había trabajo en Monterrey. Me lo ofrecieron en la licencia-
tura en teatro aquí en la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, y pues
me vine para acá.
Me pregunto si es parte de una filosofía personal no residir en el Distrito

Federal, puesto que la tendencia general de los dramaturgos nacidos fuera
de la capital es emigrar a esta.
Sí, es parte filosofía personal, parte prejuicio [risa]. Me encanta la
Ciudad de México, pero no me gusta vivir ahí. Incluso hace muchos años
me ofrecieron trabajo, y no me quise ir. Me agobian demasiado las ciudades
grandes. De hecho, Monterrey es lo más que llegué a tolerar. Creo que la
calidad de vida tiende a subir cuando uno está en una ciudad más pequeña.
¿A qué edad y/o cómo surgió tu interés por el teatro?

Yo empecé directamente a escribir teatro. En la noche me levantaba, y
empezaba a escribir una obra. Esto es raro porque en la secundaria los estu-
diantes por lo general escriben un diario o versos, o a lo mucho cuentitos. De
hecho, alguna vez bajó mi papá en la noche, y yo escondí el cuaderno, como
si estuviera escribiendo una carta de amor [risa]. No sé por qué lo hacía;
nunca lo he entendido. Creo que a mí se me dan los diálogos o la cuestión de
la teatralidad a la hora de la creación. No que visualice una puesta en escena,
pero sé lo que funciona al decirse en voz alta. Distingo desde hace mucho
cómo suenan las cosas cuando uno las lee y cómo cuando uno las dice.
SPRING 2017 189
¿Qué maestros/as consideras fundamentales en tu formación como dra-

maturgo? ¿Cuáles consideras tus influencias culturales (literatura, cine,
música, etc.)?
En cuestión de teatro, mi única maestra es Coral Aguirre. Con ella
realmente me formé —o me deformé, no sé. He aprendido algo de otros
maestros. De otros he aprendido qué no debo hacer, y he aprendido mucho
de las discusiones con mis colegas: Edgar Chías, Luis Enrique Gutiérrez, Noé
Morales, Conchi León, Daniel Serrano, etc. En cuanto a influencias, en algún
tiempo fui más o menos cinéfilo. Mi favorito era Woody Allen, y se nota en
las primeras obras. Después le perdí un atractivo al cine; ahora veo más series
que cine. Mi formación es de letras, y también se nota en las primeras obras,
donde hago una burla de mi educación, y tomo muchos referentes literarios
para dialogar con ellos muy a mi manera— un homenaje a través de la risa,
en algunos casos.
A continuación intento describir tu dramaturgia a nivel temático: predominan

personajes clasemedieros del México urbano contemporáneo, y en no pocas
ocasiones exploras la compleja dinámica de las relaciones interpersonales.
Un sello muy personal es el hábil manejo del humor, en buena parte por
medio del lenguaje coloquial de los personajes. Esto último en mi opinión
conecta de maravilla con el público. ¿Estás de acuerdo con mi comentario?
¿Qué agregarías?
Son observaciones que se han repetido a lo largo de mi carrera. Hay
también una noción del ritmo. Con respecto a Nocturno de la alcoba, un
amigo hace mucho dijo, “Lo que tú encontraste en esta obra fue el ritmo”.
Otra anécdota para ilustrar el caso es que Daniel Serrano, uno de los primeros
que monta El hombre sin adjetivos, me llama un día muy consternado, porque
dice, “¿Por qué odias a Los Pumas? ¿Por qué no pusiste otro equipo?” Él
es fanático de Los Pumas; le digo, “Sonaba chistoso”. Si la línea dice, “Es
un pendejo; le va a Los Pumas”, no suena igual que “es un pendejo; le va al
América”.
Al igual que otros dramaturgos de tu generación, utilizas extensamente los

recursos metateatrales; específicamente la narración dentro de la acción
escénica, la cual se ha dado en llamar “narraturgia”. Por ejemplo, un per-
sonaje teatral narra una historia mientras otros, e inclusive el narrador, la
actúan, ya sea como ellos mismos o desdoblados en otros personajes. Este
término y el procedimiento al cual alude constituye un referente estilístico
para las subsiguientes generaciones de dramaturgos. ¿Cuál es tu opinión

con respecto a la aplicación de este término?
La narraturgia es un término que dijo medio en broma Sanchis Sinisterra
y de la que se ha estado arrepintiendo. La narración escénica, por llamarla
de una manera más elegante, es un recurso que ha estado desde siempre. Los
griegos no tenían escenografía; entonces, narraban lo que pasaba fuera del
escenario. Durante muchas épocas la narración ha estado supliendo lo que
no se puede hacer mecánicamente en el escenario.
Hay una diferencia con la narración escénica actual: suele ser en presente.
Aun cuando se utilice la forma pretérita gramatical, te da un presente. Por
ejemplo, como Cortázar en “La noche boca arriba”, aunque está gramatical-
mente en pasado, se siente que la narración va ocurriendo en ese momento,
lo que los teóricos de la narratología llaman “temporalidad simultánea”. Pero
no nada más esto, sino el ritmo. La narración escénica suele tener otro ritmo
que la narración de la novela o el cuento, frases más cortas y contundentes. Y
obviamente la selección léxica y sintáctica, ya que, como decía Émile Zola,
la verosimilitud para la lectura en voz baja es distinta a la verosimilitud para
lo que se dice en voz alta y frente a un público.
Sin embargo, este es un recurso del cual creo que se ha abusado mucho
en los últimos años, al menos en México. Se narra por narrar y no porque
realmente la obra lo requiera. Se narra tratando de copiar una moda, pero
sin los elementos de estudio de la narración, y por eso salen cosas horribles,
inverosímiles en algunos casos, pues los narradores narran cosas que les son
imposibles de conocer, como los pensamientos de otro personaje, cuando
ambos comparten un universo ficcional.
Tus obras iniciales reescriben textos de autores fundamentales de la litera-

tura: Complejo de Hamlet (1993) [Shakespeare]; Praeceptor amoris (1996)
[Ovidio]; La doble historia del doctor Fausto (1998) [Goethe]; Edipo güey
(1999) [Sófocles]. ¿A qué obedece esta evidente línea temática?
Es obviamente por la formación literaria que tuve. Lo que me gusta hacer
a veces es darle la vuelta a las cosas —a diferencia de quienes “actualizan”
las obras literarias, presentar al personaje original en una situación contem-
poránea. Yo discutía que no le veo nada original a eso. Si se respeta la obra
literaria, dejémosla tal cual; no tiene caso “actualizarla”. Lo que yo hago es
la reinterpretación, tomando de estas figuras literarias para darle la vuelta y
decir otras cosas con estos pretextos de obras ya existentes. Si en Edipo güey
SPRING 2017 191
voy a hablar de lo mismo que dice Sófocles, pues no tiene caso; Sófocles lo
dijo muchísimo mejor que yo.
Mencionabas que La doble historia del doctor Fausto la consideras tu pri-

mera obra importante. ¿Qué textos consideras fundamentales en tu carrera
a partir de este y por qué?
Edipo güey es importante porque es de mis obras que más se han mon-
tado. Nocturno de la alcoba es una obra que a mí me forma mucho. De ahí
soy consciente de muchos aciertos y de los errores. Con El Anticristo agoto
los juegos de estructura, y digo, “Bueno, vamos a hacer otra cosa”. De ahí
brinco a El hombre sin adjetivos, que constituye un parteaguas entre una
manera y otra de escribir. Empiezo a despreocuparme un poco de las estruc-
turas y a centrarme más en los personajes, aunque no dejo de lado todas las
referencias literarias, etc.
Posterior al Hombre sin adjetivos está Barbie Girls, que sin revolucio-
nar mucho mi escritura, ha sido importante porque encuentro esa manera de
trabajar más con los personajes, y también es importante en cuanto a número
El hombre sin adjetivos. Foto: Ricardo Castillo Cuevas

Barbie Girls. Foto: Ingrid Zamarripa

SPRING 2017 193
de montajes. La han montado en más de quince ciudades en México. Creo

que Barbie Girls ha sido muy montada porque todo mundo se encariña con
estos personajes a pesar de lo terribles que son. Son mujeres que, si estuvieran
en la vida real, a uno les parecerían deleznables. Sin embargo, es una de las
cosas mágicas de la metáfora. No importa si uno es hombre, de otra edad o
estatus social, de alguna forma se identifica con la miseria personal de estas
tres chicas.
¿Qué obra/s te han dado mayor satisfacción personal, independientemente

del éxito en taquilla?
Las que acabo de mencionar. Hay otras que no están publicadas o que
no han sido montadas. Una de ellas es Y salí buscando a la bestia, donde
hago conjunción de varias de estas cosas: cuento una historia sin contar una
historia; hago los personajes complejos; la palabra se lleva a la poesía, incluso
las palabrotas. Entonces ha sido un experimento muy rico para mí. Otras son
Golem y Principio de incertidumbre, donde me enfoco en la ciencia y en ver
la realidad de una manera distinta. Estos textos constituyen retos intelectuales;
todavía no puedo hablar de una conexión con el público porque no se han
publicado [con excepción de Golem] ni se han estrenado.
¿Se han escenificado o publicado textos tuyos en el extranjero? ¿Qué satis-

facción/es destacas de esta difusión de tu obra?
Memorama se montó en Entre Ríos, Argentina; Praeceptor Amoris se
montó en Galicia, hace muchos años; Edipo güey se montó en Lima, Perú.
Como no vi ninguno de estos montajes, no sé; no tengo todavía algo que me
cause satisfacción. Memorama está traducida al inglés, en el Lark Center de
Nueva York, pero hasta donde sé, no se ha concretado ningún montaje todavía.
¿Estás trabajando en algún texto nuevo o tienes algún proyecto en mente?

Siempre tengo proyectos en mente; con [mi novia] Marysol estoy tra-
bajando en un monólogo que se llama Carmesí. Tengo un proyecto basado
en un poema de Efraín Huerta que se llama “La famosa melancolía de los
poetas”. Tiene que ver con una cuestión bastante autobiográfica: un maestro
de literatura que le va del carajo en su ciudad y tiene que salirse de ahí. Pero
aún no decido si va a ser monólogo, si va a ser narrado, si va a ser qué.
Y esos son los textos más armados; los demás son ideas sueltas.
2ª parte. Textos recientes

En una entrevista con Alejandra Serrano, mencionas lo siguiente: “La pinche
india es el cierre de un proceso que comenzó con El hombre sin adjetivos.
Todo lo que he escrito entre él y La pinche india ha sido un proceso”.2 ¿Po-
drías explicar en detalle las características de esta etapa?
Primero, alejarme lo más posible de los referentes literarios, y segundo,
centrarme más en el desarrollo de los personajes que en la estructura. Esto es
lo principal, y responde a ciertas preguntas filosóficas. El hombre sin adjetivos
está en la cuestión de la banalización de la maldad y de la vida. Barbie Girls
está en la preocupación contemporánea por la fama, hasta donde llega uno por
esta fama, esta necesidad de ser querido, de destacar. Está en Memorama, en
la pregunta de la gente definitivamente marcada como mala o indeseable pero
cuyos actos evidentemente tienen una justificación. La cuestión de cómo nos
constituimos como buenas personas a partir de la memoria, de cómo torcemos
nuestros recuerdos. Y en La pinche india está la pregunta por la identidad.
El volumen Golem (2013) contiene tres obras (Golem, Memorama, Nuestra

perversión), de las cuales la primera no se ha escenificado todavía. Dicho texto
me resulta fascinante por varios motivos: el humor prácticamente está ausente;
Arrojados al mundo sin cobertor de lana. Foto: Ricardo Castillo Cuevas

SPRING 2017 195
el bagaje de los diálogos es científico/filosófico; y la tensión constante radica

en la imposibilidad de los personajes por saber cuál es la misión final del en-
claustramiento en que se encuentran. ¿Consideras esta obra un experimento,
quizás el principio de una nueva tendencia? ¿Existen planes para su estreno?
A partir de Golem, sí creo que se detona otra nueva etapa en cuanto a la
concepción de lo humano. Lo humano como una cuestión paradójica, contra-
dictoria, irracional, no como en el teatro del absurdo, pero sí aceptando una
fuerte carga de irracionalidad. De hecho es lo que he estado estudiando—la
filosofía del irracionalismo, que incluye entre otros a Pascal, a Schopen-
hauer, a Nietzsche, a Kierkegaard e incluso a los pensadores del absurdo
como Camus, etc. En esto se basa esta etapa, ya sea con o sin humor, en
esta contradicción del ser humano y en las funciones irracionales, pulsiones
irracionales, inconscientes que dominan lo humano y que nos hacen seres
contradictorios. Donde somos y no somos al mismo tiempo y donde la última
significación está en el lector.
De Golem se han hecho lecturas; los planes para escenificarla han estado
frustrados. A partir de Golem y Principio de incertidumbre, continúo con la
pregunta sobre la existencia que me deja La pinche india, el personaje diciendo,
“Yo no soy esta; yo no soy aquella; yo soy” frente al espejo. La incertidumbre
que trato tanto en Golem como en Principio de incertidumbre es sobre la reali-
dad. Queremos saber, darle sentido a las cosas, pero a veces no tienen sentido.
En una obra que sí se montó, Asfixia erótica bajo la luna de abril, hay dos
chicas en una situación de encierro, y nunca son lo que parecen. Parece que
dicen la verdad, pero en realidad están actuando; son actrices. Parece que se
están confesando grandes cosas, pero en realidad es una actuación. Parece que
están actuando, pero en realidad se están confesando su amor. ¿Quién sabe?
Recientemente vi el video completo de Poemas para cantar entre la basura

(2013) del Grupo la Barraca, que tú mismo dirigiste. ¿Cuál fue tu experiencia
con este grupo de jóvenes?
Fue un proceso interesante, un intento por hacer teatro para adolescentes.
Fue mi primer montaje en Tijuana, en enfrentar las condiciones de hacer teatro
en Tijuana y las condiciones de trabajo con los estudiantes de la licenciatura.
La obra tuvo una vida muy corta, en parte por las ocupaciones univer-
sitarias. La mayoría de ellos eran estudiantes, algunos ya en los últimos se-
mestres, y tenían otras prioridades. Asimismo yo tenía una carga muy pesada
de trabajo en la universidad. Eso no nos permitió continuar el proyecto, pero
tuvo buena recepción entre el público adolescente.
El texto Asfixia erótica bajo la luna de abril (2014) se estrenó en Guadalajara

en un horario no convencional. ¿Cuál fue la motivación en la escritura y
escenificación de este texto, y cuál fue la respuesta del público?
Este proyecto lo hice específicamente para un grupo en Guadalajara;
querían hacer teatro de medianoche, para adultos, erótico, etc. Ese fue el
concepto, aunque uno no se puede desligar de lo que hace artísticamente.
Aunque fue casi como pedido, sigue respondiendo a estas inquietudes li-
terarias. El proyecto tuvo bastante éxito. De hecho, la comunidad lésbica
respondió con mayor fervor; varios clubes lésbicos fueron a ver la obra y
hasta repitieron funciones.
3ª parte. Otras actividades

A partir del 2013 trabajas como profesor de tiempo completo en la Facultad
de Artes de la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC). ¿Qué
actividades llevas a cabo en esta institución?
Actualmente soy el coordinador de la licenciatura en teatro, y obviamente
doy clases ahí. Estuve dando clases en la maestría en artes, y hemos logrado
hacer contacto con otras universidades. Di una materia para la maestría en
dirección de la Escuela Superior de Artes en Yucatán (ESAY). Tengo tam-
bién las actividades académicas: ponencias, conferencias, cursos, etc. Esto
es básicamente en lo que he estado.
Ahora me dedico más a la escritura académica. Este año saqué un mi-
crodrama para los microteatros de Guadalajara. Vamos a ver qué otra cosa
puedo concretar este año. Espero que terminemos el monólogo este año [risa].
¿Cuál es tu opinión sobre la actividad cultural y teatral en Tijuana en la

actualidad?
Para el tamaño de la ciudad hay una actividad cultural intensa, en teatro
específicamente. Aunque las instituciones dan apoyos, aquí el teatro funciona
por la gente de teatro, en comparación con Monterrey. Las ganas de los tea-
tristas de hacer las cosas sacan los festivales adelante. Por ejemplo, Daniel
Serrano comenzó el Festival Universitario de Teatro (FUT) hace diecinueve
años, y aunque ya se institucionalizó, sigue funcionando por ese impulso de
la gente de teatro en la universidad.
Hay muchos festivales de teatro en la ciudad. Por ejemplo, el festival
Tijuana Hace Teatro de la compañía del mismo nombre; ellos lo gestionan
todo. La Semana de Teatro para Niños, que organizan Michel Guerra y
Raymundo Garduño. Está el Festival de las Artes Escénicas de Baja Califor-
SPRING 2017 197
nia, que organiza Jorge Folgueira, este año prácticamente sin apoyo de las
instituciones. Está el Encuentro de Dramaturgia y Teatro del CECUT. Algo
muy distinto en Monterrey, porque allá el teatro está totalmente apegado a
las instituciones. Aquí las instituciones apoyan poco y el teatro realmente
funciona por los teatristas.
Tienes una amplia experiencia como editor, destacadamente como jefe de

ediciones en el Consejo para la Cultura y las Artes de Nuevo León y editor
en el Fondo Editorial de Nuevo León. ¿Cómo surgió tu interés por la edi-
ción? ¿Qué satisfacciones te ha dado esta actividad? ¿En qué manera te ha
ayudado en tu labor como escritor y profesor?
Yo siempre he tenido un pie en el teatro y otro en la literatura. La
profesión de editor siempre estuvo ahí; siempre hacía pequeños trabajitos
editoriales, trabajé en periódicos, etc. Luego tuve la oportunidad de formar
un libro—hacer la maquetación, elegir la tipografía, todo lo que implica el
trabajo editorial. Incluso llegué a diseñar colecciones.
Es bueno estar del otro lado. Así como en el teatro es bueno no nomás
ser director, subirse al escenario, aunque sea por la experiencia, colgar las
luces, etc., así en el lado literario es bueno conocer todas las facetas porque
así uno entiende mejor el sistema. Hay un artículo de Itamar Even-Sohar,
investigador de la universidad de Tel Aviv, que se llama “El sistema literario”,
y establece que el sistema de la literatura no es nada más el libro y el lector.
Entre el escritor y el lector hay un proceso grandísimo que abarca gente que
quizás no ha leído ningún libro en su vida: los choferes que manejan los
camiones donde llevan los libros, la cajera que está en la librería. Lo mismo
en el sistema teatral: las personas que trabajan en el Instituto de Cultura, por
años involucradas en un festival de teatro sin pararse en una sala, y cosas así.
Sin irnos a esos extremos, es bueno tener conciencia de que cada una
de las disciplinas artísticas está inmersa en un sistema. Es principalmente
esa perspectiva la que me ha dado el trabajo como editor, para conocer más
a fondo todo el sistema literario, no nada más la cuestión romántica de la
escritura o de la lectura; generalmente son procesos muy solitarios. Esto es
más amplio todavía y bastante arduo.
El volumen Golem se publicó en la editorial digital Malaletra. ¿Qué piensas

con respecto al futuro de la publicación en papel versus formato digital?
Yo creo que la edición digital tiene futuro. De hecho, yo ya he estado
comprando libros digitales, sobre todo por la cuestión de la mudanza [risa].
Tiene ciertas ventajas, como la movilidad. A veces es más fácil encontrar una
edición digital, y descargarla es más rápido. Claro, está la cosa romántica
de tener el libro, el papel, olerlo, y todo esto. Al menos en México, faltan
años para que la edición digital prenda un poco más. Primero porque es un
país donde se lee poco y además que los lectores están poco tecnologizados
y muy arraigados al papel.
Con respecto a la editorial Malaletra, ¿tú participas o participaste en la

creación de esta editorial? Lo pregunto porque hay disponibles textos de
otros dramaturgos de tu generación como Daniel Serrano, Edgar Chías, etc.
No es que tengamos participación en la creación, pero sí hay algo sospe-
choso al respecto [risa]; no es casualidad. Quienes mencionas somos de los
primeros apuntados en esta editorial. El asunto es este: Alejandra Serrano,
quien está directamente involucrada con nosotros en el Festival de la Joven
Dramaturgia, se divorció de Luis Enrique Gutiérrez [LEGOM], y su nueva
pareja es el editor de Malaletra. Él ya hacía ediciones digitales, y el contacto
con Alejandra lo acercó a la dramaturgia. Malaletra publica novela y poesía
también. Ahí está lo sospechoso.
Asimismo, destaca tu participación en festivales de teatro, en especial en

la Semana Internacional de la Dramaturgia Contemporánea y la Muestra
Nacional de la Joven Dramaturgia, tanto como dramaturgo como codirector
artístico. En tu opinión, ¿cuál ha sido la aportación de ambos festivales a
la dramaturgia mexicana?
El desarrollo de la dramaturgia mexicana contemporánea, en específico de
nuestra generación, se debe básicamente a esos dos festivales. Curiosamente,
el dramaturgo generaciones atrás no tenía importancia; ni le hablaban para
pedirle las obras, ni tenía poder de decisión en los montajes, y era como una
figura a veces ajena, a veces mítica. Eso cambió mucho con la generación
anterior y la nuestra.
Parafraseando a Alejandra Serrano al respecto: mientras que hace veinte
años a los dramaturgos los relegaban —nadie los invitaba ni notificaban de
los montajes— ahora los dramaturgos son casi rockstars del teatro mexicano.
A lo que me refiero es que la figura del dramaturgo ha cobrado importancia
nuevamente, y en algunos casos incluso los nombres de algunos autores se
han vuelto casi una marca comercial.
SPRING 2017 199
Tu interés por la ciencia y la filosofía resulta evidente en tu investigación:

“Von Hartmann vs Freud: lo inconsciente en Stanislavski” (psicología), “La
dramaturgia de la dramaturgia” (el paradigma de la complejidad, la lógica
difusa y los conjuntos difusos) y tu más reciente publicación, La ciencia en
Stanislavski (2014). ¿Cómo surgió este interés, y en qué proyectos en esta
línea estás desarrollando o piensas trabajar en el futuro?
Siempre he tenido interés en la difusión de la ciencia. Nunca tuve aspi-
ración de ser físico, químico o astrónomo. Sin embargo, sí me gustan. Hay
datos que los científicos arrojan sin darle importancia aparentemente pero
que lo hacen a uno pensar filosóficamente.
Por ejemplo, de la primera década del siglo XX para acá, en la física, la
mecánica cuántica, se descubre que las partículas del átomo (los protones, los
electrones, etc.) son sumamente diminutos y que prácticamente no ocupan
nada de la masa del átomo. Los átomos son 90% vacío. Entonces, si esta-
mos hechos de átomos, somos 90% vacío. Uno se queda pensando, y surgen
conjeturas. Por esto me interesa la ciencia, porque incita a la reflexión sobre
la condición humana y la realidad.
Respecto a La ciencia en Stanislavski, ¿cuál es la contribución de esta pu-

blicación a los estudios teatrales?
[Risa] Eso no me corresponde decidirlo a mí.
En realidad, Stanislavski es un pretexto para desarrollar una hipótesis, la cual
es que todos los métodos actorales, sean los que sean, constituyen en realidad
metáforas para explicar el funcionamiento psicofisiológico del cuerpo del actor.
Cuando nos peleamos entre un método y otro lo hacemos por tonterías. En
el fondo los métodos tratan de explicar un mismo proceso, el mismo trabajo
en cuanto al actor. Hay que ver que la diferencia entre métodos actorales en
realidad es una cuestión ideológica y estética; no hay que perder de vista que
en el fondo los procesos son los mismos.
¿Qué otros planes futuros tienes, además de la escritura teatral, la edición,

la enseñanza y la investigación?
[Risa] Estoy haciendo planes para la jubilación [Más risa].
Muchas gracias por la entrevista.
Hampden-Sydney College
Notas
1
Las fechas corresponden al estreno.
2
Disponible en http://detectivesalvaje.com/tm/articulo.php?id=398 (consultado el 7 de marzo
2017).
SPRING 2017 201
American Theatre on a Latin Beat: Interviewing Pregones After

38 Years on the Stages of New York
Beatriz J. Rizk
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 fol-
lows 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 theatrical enterprise enhanced by the
recent historical merger with the late pioneer Miriam Colón’s Puerto Rican
Traveling Theater (PRTT). This is undoubtedly history in the making for a
future recollection of Latina/o’s contribution to the New York stages and a
memorable opportunity to delve into what it takes to be a successful artist
in these difficult times.1 My gratitude goes to them for their generous time
and knowledge.
BJR: Let’s start at the beginning. Whose ideas blossomed into the initial show
Pregones presented, a collection of scenes from Puerto Rican playwrights?
I still remember some of the scenes from Manuel Méndez Ballester’s Bien-
venido, don Goyito, Luis Rafael Sánchez’s Los ángeles se han fatigado, and
René Marqués’s Carnaval adentro, carnaval afuera, among others.
RR: In 1978 we began thinking about it and in 1979 we shook hands. I wanted
to do a certain type of Puerto Rican theatre that was not being shown on
Latina/o stages at that moment, at least not the way I wanted. Luis Meléndez
and I began to talk about it. Given his prior involvement with the popular
theatre movement on the island, he began to think about whether we could
create something that could be movable, tour-able. Not that we wanted to
create a company, but we wanted to fulfill an artistic need. At that time Re-
pertorio Español, INTAR, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Nuestro Teatro,
IATI, and El Portón, were the Latina/o stages in New York. They were do-
ing good work, and now I understand it more. And we said, “What if we do
something on our own, and we get something to take out to the community
rather than to have people come to the theatre?” We were only vaguely aware
of how the audiences moved at that time. In other words, we knew theatre
companies were coming from Philadelphia, from Baltimore, and Connecticut
to Manhattan; they were touring companies and had been doing it for years.
We were young and adventurous and wanted to test the waters like that. We
wanted to put something together that was Puerto Rican in nature, in Spanish,
that we could take to non-conventional stages, students halls, churches, and
so on. We began to test the waters by talking to people.
Who are “we” and what were the major influences at the time?
RR: The first conversations that I had about this ever was with Raúl Dávila.
We were doing a show together at the then Dumé Theater, now Thalia, and I
said to Raúl: “I have this concern,” and Raúl answered: “Go for it, I love the
idea, doing something that you can take everywhere. I always wanted to do
it but you know my career is so different. It is already set in more conven-
tional ways, but you should.” Luis was stage manager in that show and he
kept talking about his experience with Latin American Popular Theatre, with
the group Anamú in Puerto Rico. He was my biggest influence, shaping the
target of where my idea could go. I didn’t have that previous experience at all.
My experience was more formal, first in dancing and then acting. I had
stopped acting while in college and graduate school, but what always remained
in me is when I was in high school. There was a theatre contest of all the
high schools in Puerto Rico, and they would award the Leopoldo Santiago
Lavandero Award for best actress. When I was in my senior year I won the
best actress award. And they took our little play to many places around the
island. Fast forward seven or eight years and I said: “My goodness, what if
I could do that with this idea.” Luis asked me, I remember, “Where would
we start if we want to do something like that?” And I said: “I would like to
do all of the Puerto Rican plays ever in one night.” Raúl, who was putting
on make-up, overheard us and said: “That is a good idea.” And then we said,
“What if we do a collection where we can select scenes from the best plays?”
The whole thing ended up being nine scenes from Puerto Rican plays from
1878 to 1978, from El Gíbaro [by Manuel A. Alonso] to Carnaval adentro.
First, we began to do research; we were not in a hurry. Shortly after we
began the conversations, David Crommett joined us. Then Socorro Santiago
SPRING 2017 203
and Martha de la Cruz came and stayed for a while. People came and went,
but it was the three of us from the beginning. We ended up with 65 plays.
Herminio Vargas came one day and said, “I want you to meet Víctor Fragoso.”
Victor helped us to turn things around. He got Clemente Soto Vélez in our
conversations and he challenged us. We were running around with sixteen
scenes. Victor kept saying: “This is too long. You don’t need this scene,
you don’t need the other.” We fought it out and we ended up with nine. We
staged it under the name “La Colección” (later renamed “Migrants”). That
last stretch is when we did our first reading. We presented it in living rooms
of friends, and in odd places up in El Barrio. You were there in one of those
presentations, and so was Emilio Carballido. Brenda Feliciano and Ángelo
del Toro had recorded a theme, Yagrumo Opera, to use as music. Emilio
exploded at the end of the presentation, during the talk back. He said: “How
could you Puerto Ricans, who can make music out of a tin can, have recorded
music instead of using live musicians?” From then on we had live music on
the stage. And Luis kept saying that he wanted Alvan to see the work. Alvan
was directing the PRTT training unit at that time. It was very successful. We
also got to know people; Dolores Prida became a fan.
How long did the show stay with you?

RR: It stayed in repertory for five or six years. In New York we did a formal
presentation at what was La Tertulia, later to become LATEA. Víctor opened
a lot of doors for us, because he was coming from the university system, at
Rutgers University, where we went often, and Princeton, too. We received
calls from Taller Puertorriqueño, and then we began to call ourselves a touring
group, not a company. We didn’t have a name at first, but then we realized
that this started to look like a company. The name came from the collection.
At first it was “Yagrumo,” which is the name of a tree. We took a vote. Víctor
was there. He was adamant about calling the company “Pregones.” A friend
of Clemente said that the translation into English of “pregones” is “street
vendor chants,” and I found the translation to be beautiful. For a moment
we thought of calling the company “Chants of Street Vendors Company.”
Anyway, to go back to the original question, it was Luis’s political guidance
that led us to the idea of popular theatre to be done everywhere.
Alvan, when did you come into the picture?

ACL: I was here, I was living here. I had been working at the Puerto Rican
Traveling Theater in the training unit. I directed it for a couple years. I saw
Pregones Theater’s work at La Fonda Restaurant, in El Barrio, and found

it very interesting. It was in 1981. I approached the group feeling that they
needed some technical support. I felt there were things that could be done in
a more efficient manner. So, I got involved with them, and I also did some
performing. I had the influence of Latin American theatre very present, par-
ticularly Colombian theatre with Enrique Buenaventura’s TEC [Teatro Ex-
perimental de Cali], Santiago García of La Candelaria, Atahualpa del Cioppo
from Uruguay. I had them very present in my view of what theatre could do
in terms of engaging the audience, with new proposals and having some fun
with them. From then on, I have not stopped. I assumed different roles, but the
majority were production-related. Slowly my artistic career took another turn,
but at that point in our development we were wearing many hats. It was all a
big pharmacy; we were all doing literally everything. There was no lighting
department, scenery department, or literary department. With the years and
with exchanges of work with other companies in the U.S., we started to see
that there is this division of labor that can make things a little more efficient.
So, I put aside my artistic edge and kept my production side. Even though I
never left the artistic side; I wrote a children’s play [Caravana] and partici-
pated actively in the development of all the key plays such as Voices of Steel/
Voces de acero [1989]. That was a big jump aesthetically for the company
In 1984, I went to Cuba, to one of the ITI [International Theatre Institute]
Festivals, and there I saw Teatro Foro. Then, I came back and proposed to the
team that we do it. I thought that it would help us to engage the audience in
a very active fashion. We were dealing deeply with the AIDS crisis. It was a
terrible thing that was affecting us because we were losing our friends. So,
we worked on a piece that later developed into several pieces using Forum
Theatre techniques. Jorge was able to go to Brazil to take a workshop with
[Augusto] Boal. Actually, Boal came here to New York. We were doing a
performance in a homeless shelter and we invited him. People who were liv-
ing in the shelter were there. They were the participants; we had no public in
the sense that we talk about public now. He was taken aback by it.
RR: Back then we were solely a touring company with no roof over our
heads, from 1979 to 1985. The aesthetics of our work was one that could
survive moving around.
Jorge, what about you, when did you join the group?
JM: I came to the company once it had established roots in St. Ann’s The-
ater, in the South Bronx, thanks to father Roberto Morales. He offered us
SPRING 2017 205
the gym at St. Anne’s Church as a permanent home. It was an opportunity to

develop a repertory, in our own home, and a relationship with an audience
in a more on-going and consistent basis. I came as part of a second wave of
artists that have joined the company from a different generation, some of us
bringing the experience of another voice of Puerto Ricans who were born
and raised in New York City. Some of us, like myself, were born and raised
in Puerto Rico but established a career and an identity here. For me this is
interesting because I was a student from a school system that had no access
to Latin American theatre practices per se. I was in a conservatory of dance
after studying architecture and planning for a year and a half. But politically
I had a very different upbringing and background. I was beginning to be very
curious about Marx, about socialism and communism. I was taking classes
at a Marxist school and meeting people who were related to those types of
movements. That was part of my background and where my mind was going,
which I was not getting at the conservatory. Then, I moved to City College
to continue my dance training there as part of the BFA program (no longer
in existence). Again, there was no connection with Latina/o theatre or cul-
ture in there. So, for me, Latin American theatre was completely unknown
except for the fact that there was some theatre in Spanish, mainly classical
Spanish theatre.
It was at the school that I met Judith Rivera. We became good friends.
We did a play together: Prohibido suicidarse en primavera [by Alejandro
Casona] and that’s because we were looking for plays in Spanish. Judith told
me that she had joined this theatre company. I was hungry for a space where
I could join my artistic interests with my political points of view that would
make sense to me. I had no idea that Pregones was two places in one. Judith
asked me to come to a rehearsal, in 1987, when the company was going
through their first full season at St. Anne’s. One of the actors was leaving
Migrants, which was the show that was opening the theater. I was brought in
just for a conversation. I came and saw these people who were conducting a
conversation where art was part of it, music was playing at some point, and
then I read some scenes. It was a very unconventional way of working at a
rehearsal. I left the meeting thinking, “Wow, there is a space for the type of
interests that I want to pursue.” Then I came back for the next rehearsal, and
next thing I know the show is opening. And we did a whole run of Migrants
at that theatre. I said to myself, “This feels like a family of artists who are
trying to search for new ways to understand ourselves.” So, I say, “I’m going
to stay in this space for a little while.” And it’s been now almost 30 years.
Let’s talk about the repertory, how do you choose the topics?
JM: One thing that I would like to add is the imprint an idea could have, in
our way of approaching our art making, and how that has evolved throughout
the years. If you look at our repertory, it has been very varied and not one-
sided. But there is an imprint that I think began with the idea that Rosalba
had of the collection of ideas, of voices, of languages. And it has been very
consistent through the years in our repertory, and our way of developing art,
that episodic understanding that very often is about bringing together different
voices, scenes, and poems. This then would allow you as an artist to surrender
to and find a new path, a new way of understanding art. Now, I think that
that “finger print” is what set us apart, not just the political questioning that
we are doing in most of our plays. We ask people to question themselves:
“We are not here only to entertain you, but also to make you question things
about your life that perhaps can be improved.”
ACL: I see it as a “sine” curve that goes through the line of all our work. Our
work is different in style when Rosalba approaches something, when Jorge
approaches something, and when I approach it, too. We have differences in
our styles but the sine curve is prevalent and is the through line in our work.
Has there been an organic development from one play to the next?
JM: I think it has to do with urgency, and relevance, what makes us gear
towards a topic, a playwright, or a way of language. We are always talking,
having these conversations about things that matter to us. And out of these
conversations each of us goes back to their own process and says, “This is
resonating with me, it interests me as an artist.” And then we bring it as a
project. We discuss them again, and we go back and forth, so there is an ongo-
ing conversation taking place. But I think before we address topics we have
to address what is the diaspora, and how diaspora influences and shapes the
way an artist approaches themes and topics. For instance, by being part of
the diaspora you first go back to what you know, your language, your culture
and your people. That’s the first thing that you hold on to understand who
you are. Once you feel a little more certain that this is where you stand, you
open up, and you begin to understand that you have out there a mire of voices
around you that are similar and may even inform you more than if you go to
the Dominican Republic or South America. You begin to hear voices and say
what is it about in those voices, those writings, that poetry, that is resonating
with my experience. I can never talk about something that I don’t know, but
this is something that is influencing me rather than going through writers.
SPRING 2017 207
You are all transplanted Puerto Ricans in New York City, which is also cultur-
ally an extension of Puerto Rico. Your first impulse was to make community
by bringing Puerto Rican playwrights to the stage, but there is a moment
when you started to work on topics that originated in the U.S. Puerto Rican
community. There is such thing as a Nuyorican aesthetics out there. Now, your
aesthetics has been very different until rather recently. I’m thinking of Dancing
with My Cockroach Shoes, by Magdalena Gómez, which you brought to the
Encuentro in Los Angeles, in 2014, and which displays a distinct Nuyorican
style. When and why did the conflation of those aesthetics take place?
RR: There is an existential, sort of emotional shift in us. When we started,
we were recent arrivals, just ten years here, but that is not a long time to
make you see something else. Our emotional tide was with the island and
our behavior was of islanders here in the city. I remember the first time that
I realized there was a different kind of me; it was on a panel at one of Teatro
4’s Encuentros at the Museo del Barrio. Evelina [Fernández] was on the panel
and the discussion was about “What is bilingual theatre?” We saw all those
Chicano plays and said, “That’s not bilingual, Rulfo is bilingual.” And we got
into this discussion. What I think we discovered is that there are two ways
of being bilingual. I think I began to understand Chicanos before I began to
understand Nuyoricans in that I felt I could study them at a distance, while
the latter were more personal. These are Puerto Ricans too, Nuyoricans, but
“My god we are so different.”
I think our shift began early, when we joined the Union 1199, with the
whole idea of doing the play High Noon/Al Mediodía. We began to see our
other-selves that were fighters in that Union. We were Puerto Ricans, but we
were different; I call it an emotional shift. By that time we were already a
group. We had five or six people, and we were always traveling. The more
we traveled, the more we learned that there was another side of us that was
not present in our work. And then we began those conversations. Originally
it was with visual artists. I remember, with Jorge Soto, and he was saying,
“Why don’t you get it?” We were not getting each other. And when José
García walked in here, it was like a very familiar stranger coming in. He
started vocalizing, and the more that relationship blossomed, the more we
realized we were one family and we had to figure it out. Also in High Noon
we started to deal with bilingual words. By the time we did El apagón [The
Blackout]— based on a short story by José Luis González— it came naturally.
These two men sharing that one role [originally played by Jorge Merced] as
the two sides of us in one place. It is one person splitting into two.
ACL: High Noon was really important; it had multiple facets that developed on
the stage. It was our working with organized labor, with the Syndicate Local
1199 that was undergoing turmoil. The founder had died; the one who had
assumed leadership was tyrannical, an anti-democratic leader. The Latina/o
voices within the Union were being shut down. We started talking with some
of these folks and came up with the idea of developing a play with them,
but that was one involvement. The other involvement that occurs with High
Noon is that at a point in time a Spaniard worked with us, Miguel Camarero,
along with a Dominican actor, Manuel Herrera, who did not know a word
of English, and an Anglo actor who came from the Mass Transit Theater
Company. So, working in this play High Noon/Al Mediodía we are bringing
in all these folks who come from different cultures than ours and we were
able to come together, do a play, perform it, and elicit the response that we
were expecting. That was another thing that I found interesting and just re-
membered when Rosalba mentioned it. How these processes will affect you
and affect what you want to work on.
JM: What happened then is also that the relationships in the company changed.
I was working with the gay movement here, so I had a lot of contact with
other non-Latinas/os. I was many times the only Latino at meetings; I knew
how to deal with that. But there was another aspect of it that I knew; it was
coming back from those places into Pregones, and part of that was my artistic
understanding of what a place it was. Judith, José, and I were part of a trio,
able to test and challenge each other. I remember in conversations after re-
hearsals we talked about our upbringing. It was an awakening for them, and
for me, that our experiences were similar, in different languages, but they were
also complementary. That was a great process, a great political awakening
that you cannot get unless you have the space where you can surrender to
all those things that make you stand where you are. That kind of a breaking
down, or a notion of what we could do, what the language should be, what
works we should do. That was happening in the company. After that critical
process of understanding what the language was, Alvan brought the idea of
working in Voces de acero [Voices of Steel]. That was happening at the same
time that the company was shifting the understanding of ourselves. Alvan
brought the material to the table, some choreopoems that had nothing to do
with what we were expecting to be working on. It was 1987. Alvan started to
test us and push us to find meaning that had not necessarily surfaced. Voces
set the path for us to follow.
SPRING 2017 209
Defining identity, in cultural nationalistic terms, was a big concern during

the 1970s and 1980s. Taking into consideration what you just said, how
compelling is it today and how is it communicated?
RR: There are expectations that the main themes of a company like ours
have to be all about being Puerto Rican or our identity. So we began to
challenge the notion that we can talk about whatever we want. For instance,
our children’s program, or when we did our first collaboration with the Ap-
palachia’s Roadside Theater Company, and with Junebug Productions, an
African-American company based in New Orleans. Thanks in big part to the
continued theatre movement in Latin America, every time we went there for
the Encuentros, we got filled with energy. We came back here and started to
look at other options. I remember when we had that collaboration that we
were struggling with what we were going to talk about. We had our own
issues, the Appalachians had their own, too, and the African-Americans in
New Orleans also had their own. We ended up doing a play about love. We
wanted to conquer that territory of talking about whatever issue was impor-
tant, but the work did not necessarily have to be issued-oriented. Everything
is a social issue and affects us socially, so the final product was Promise of
a Love Song (2001). That is why today we can afford, and have the luxury
to have a play about astronauts.2 It’s all integrated. We did have backlashes,
though; actually a well-known director told us, “So, I hear that you’re not
Puerto Rican anymore.”
What is in the works for Pregones?

RR: We don’t have that many single line stories in our repertory. We are
fascinated with the classics, two specific classics. What is it that we have to
say today about these lives? I’m working with Marianela, by Benito Pérez
Galdós, and the Quijote. In the future, I hope to get both of them off. Don
Quijote will be a subway conductor who has been back and forth from the
same station for over twenty years and he is about to retire. And he wants to
take the train, in his mind, and take it all the way down to the tip of South
America. After he disengages the wagon, —the wagon is Rocinante— he real-
izes that someone is sleeping in the car, and that is Sancho, and the journey
begins. So that’s the premise of it. That’s our way of infusing ourselves in
something wonderful. Yes, it is in Spanish, and yes, it is European. I’m not
worried about that part. It is a great story and I have found out that we live
in a global “aldea.” The first line is: “En algún lugar de Manhattan, de cuyo
nombre no quiero acordarme.”
Now, with regards to Marianela, what is interesting for me is what sur-

faces today, the use of her image, the meaning of beauty. The whole mining
culture, having worked with our friends in the Appalachia for twenty years,
I figure this could take place in Kentucky, in Chile, or any mining country, in
South Africa, for example. I realize that these are universal themes that I’m
fascinated with as well as other contemporary issues, such as the meaning
of capitalism, or how we run our lives. We have these existential yearnings
and ambitions and you never know which one should land first. We have
created something that is called remojo, and that is our ideas that are soaking
in water until the creative juices are ready to come out. About two or three
years ago, we began to share those ideas with the public, even on occasions
taking a vote. “Which ideas do you think we should do first?” we have asked
them. Even in Promise of a Love Song, we had three titles. We took a vote and
we selected the one the audience voted for. It’s good to take the audience’s
opinion. What is urgent for me would not be urgent for everyone else, and
at the end I also want to be satisfied.
Bearing in mind the work you have done with groups from other cultures,
what do you believe is the future of Latina/o theatre? Because, when we are
qualitatively but one more voice in that multi-cultural and multi-ethnic quilt
that represents U.S. society, won’t our work cease to be specifically Latina/o?
RR: I have not resolved that because I do believe there is a value in qualify-
ing things that bind us culturally. There is a value in giving a name to iden-
tify these things, not to limit it but to identify it. And I do believe that it is
something that connects whatever we are talking about that is existential in
nature and still has our imprint that connect us culturally. So, I won’t disre-
gard it completely... That is our corner and what we are bringing to the table.
Luis Valdez said something courageous in that Encuentro [Latina/o Theatre
Commons’s convening in Boston in 2013] that “We are American theatre,”
and he is absolutely right. We have a show called The Harlem Hellfighters
on a Latin Beat, and I would love to push the title and call it American The-
atre on a Latin Beat. That’s what we are! There has to be a generosity and
understanding that we are all sharing the space. If I had any power, I would
label white theatre as such because that’s culturally specific, too. So, we are
forcing them to diversify. And the reality is that we have all diversified one
way or another. For us to be American theatre we have to bring down that
barrier among dominant culture’s understanding that it is not inclusive of
South America.
SPRING 2017 211
ACL: As a way for us to affirm our identity, our self-value, very recently, we
rejected being denominated as part of the American culture. We do theatre
here in New York and in the United States, but we wanted to be identified as
Latin American theatre, too. Surprisingly, we got great support from Latin
American theatre makers. Now, our theatre is American theatre. It doesn’t
have to be about pigeons, the grandmother, and the beans. Several years ago
we did a play titled Game Over, which was a musical take of the Book of
Job from the Hebrew bible. And some people were asking, “Where are the
rice and beans in that?” We can address any issue we want and we address it
from our own perspective, without meddling with who we are, or pretending
to be somebody else.
You have your own space here in the South Bronx Cultural Corridor, at
Walton Avenue, since 2001. Now, did the stability that comes with the new
space change you as a company? After all, you are one of the few Latina/o
companies that effectively make a living out of your own work.
RR: It has changed the way we work even though sometimes I miss the life
of a nomad that we had before. The bigger change came when we had to
invite artists to share our space because we continued to travel. We picked
up funding, too, and realized that that combination was going to sustain us
in the long run. A few years passed before we were able to have a play run-
ning while we were rehearsing another. In the presenting program, we have
featured hundreds of artists over the years, and we have also toured eleven
countries and 37 states. That’s a huge touring life! We tour less now and
present more. So, whenever we can, we tour, but now we have the theatre
and once you have a place, there are community expectations in place and
you have to pay attention.
What about the company’s structure?

RR: The company is structured in teams. We have transitioned from driving
a company to leading a company. We have a managing team and we have an
artistic team, which is ourselves and Desmar [Guevara] as musical director,
with different responsibilities in decision making. A lot of decisions we make
are connected to administrators’ decisions, because that is going to affect
how our dreams are going to become a reality. We have to pay attention to
the needs of the space as another magnet that has to be kept in good shape.
We have nine people full time, and four part time; this is just on the admin-
istrative side. As for the actors, we have a pool of actors; some of them get a
contract for a year. If we have several projects, some get a season contract,
and if not they get a per-project based contract. We also have the educational
program and sometimes the actors that are not performing do that work, too.
The Education Program is going to change because we are considering it for
both theaters and that is challenging.
I’m glad you touched the subject that we were waiting for. Please fill in the
historical details on the merge with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.
RR: We began to take very specific steps. Actually, it’s interesting, because I
think that is a good way to begin, by collaborating in productions. In 1996-97
we began to flirt with the idea that we could do this more formally. That initial
artistic collaboration set the tone because for both Miriam and ourselves that
connection had to be above everything else, that we have convergence in our
artistic ambitions and values even if we did it differently. If our initiation is-
sue was different, we shared similar goals. So, we never had the expectation
of merging at that point; it came later. We started sharing our staff members,
too, at the beginning, and it was evident that a permanent connection would
guarantee some urgent succession for us and for the Puerto Rican Traveling
Theater. The merge would bring incredible assets to our company via Miriam’s
presence, what she means, and her history. That’s when our conversations
began, and about five years ago we said we should shake hands on this. We
started to co-manage certain programs and eventually we were sharing an
attorney and he suggested that it didn’t make any sense that we were doing
our work separately, and then we began talking about merging. We submitted
all the paper work in January 27, 2013. Everything has been approved and
we are waiting for the process at the State level, because it is a State consid-
eration. We are thinking that by the end of this year it will be sealed. After
that we have to prove that we are actually married and living together. It’s
a whole big process because in reality it becomes a whole new corporation.
And a new corporation has to undergo public scrutiny.
Let’s talk about I Like It Like That, the musical based on life in the Barrio
during the 1960s, featuring music by the legendary members of Fania Re-
cords, which will open next year. Was that a collaboration between the two
theaters, or a Pregones production?
RR: It’s more a theatrical, organizational collaboration. There is some level
of creative collaboration in it, but we are just starting the process. Here is the
thing: there is a history of collaborations from this group of people, headed
SPRING 2017 213
by David Maldonado, the producer of the musicals La Lupe and Hector La-
voe, and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater from before. We are respecting
something that was there before; just because it was not with us doesn’t mean
that it was not valuable. Miriam had an extraordinary experience with them,
and she has proven to be right. Working with them has been a real pleasure.
So, we saw here an opportunity for the first time to have that experience that
Miriam had and we don’t have, until now, with the commercial outfit. We
want to tap into that experience in this format. We want to be here and figure
it out, and getting to know each other has been good. The beautiful part is
that we have provided the structure for it to flourish and for us to be present
and contributing to the shaping of the piece. It’s something that is their baby
and we are helping to raise it to see where it lands.3
Music has always been an integral part of Pregones productions. Do you

believe that you do theatre with music (à la Brecht) or musical theatre?
ACL: Yes, most of the work that the ensemble generates is heavily anchored
in music.
RR: Musical plays, that’s what we call it. Occasionally, we have gotten into
the music theatre conversation, because musical theatre has an implication. We
fluctuate between calling it musical theatre or theatre with music, depending
on the type of theatre we are doing. For the most part it is music created for a
specific production. Occasionally, we also rely on canon music, for instance;
if we have boleros in the production we use Myrta Silva, and so on.
JM: I see it as theatre with music. Music is a language that we support and
bring to the stage alive, and it’s essential to what we do. As a language, it can
also be digitalized music that is being played live on the stage. For instance,
the show that I am directing now, The Marchers, has two musicians. I’m
going to treat this particular theatrical journey via digital music or digital
samplings of sound. There is a sound of a paper falling, and then I’ve asked
them to find the rhythm in there and to create a composition based on that. It’s
not like music played with a traditional instrument, but there is a composer
there who is creating something for us. So, music is a language that we use
most of the time generated by a musician that is using his expertise and who
contributes to the staging of that production.4
RR: There is also something important, which is the amount of musicians that
have come and played in our theatre. It is a different approach than when they
play in a club, or a concert. Also, the amount of actors that we have trained
to work with musicians, because it is not something that comes naturally to
actors. When you have to enter into that dynamic on the stage it is a really
nice professional development and a skill for an artist to have. So that is the
one thing that we appreciate.
A final question, what do you say to the next generation who one day will
inevitably take your place? What’s your advice?
RR: My advice would go to the parents, not the young persons. When a child
tells you they want to be an artist, take it seriously. Don’t discourage them;
don’t try to turn them into doctors and lawyers. Believe in their dreams, but
don’t wait until they happen. If they have a creative idea, figure out a way to
do it among friends who have the resources to do certain things. There is no
other way. I always say there is no plan B. Approach it as if that it is the only
plan in your life. The beauty of it is that there are so many things connected
to creativity that do not really have to do with being on the stage; there is the
production side of it, there is scholarly work, and so on. There are so many
things that a person could do combining creative thoughts and yearnings
with other things. And make sure also that they can understand the field, the
structure of the profession, because there is plenty of room.
JM: I wouldn’t say today the same thing I would have said twenty years ago.
Today I would say that there is a path that has already been crossed by many
people who have contributed to that collective wisdom that informs what
it means to do theatre rooted in Latina/o experience and voices. If there is
something that you want to do, go back and see what people have done so
you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Your art is going to be much better if
you have knowledge of the things that have informed our society as a whole
and of the contributions of Latinas/os to our society. So, you don’t have to
make the same mistakes. Secondly, don’t do this if all you want to do is to
become famous, or want people to know about you, because that is not what
art does. That is something that this current society is instilling in us about
recognition. No, art is essential for a reason; art makes society move forward.
If you believe in that, that is what you have to do. Recognition and knowledge
of people about you, that is an economic structure that is fooling you into
thinking that art is a commodity. If you have these two things clear, the path
of those that came before you and the lessons they learned so you can learn
them and benefit from that, and not to do it because society is telling you
that that’s the way to become famous and rich. Now, we have people who
have reached amazing notoriety and recognition via commercial theatre. I’m
really happy for them. I think the more the merrier. And I think those voices
SPRING 2017 215
are much needed, so a wider spectrum of audiences will understand that there
are different voices in the way to create art. These people have been working
way before that, with even more comprehensive work, than the ones who are
getting notoriety now. I’m happy for those folks who are toiling those battles
out there to get recognition. Our communities are much wiser and have a
long history of questions, battles, compromises, and the richness that comes
out of the work that art provides.
AV: That’s a very difficult question, because I don’t feel in a position to be
giving advice to people unless they ask me for it, but you should only be
doing this if you are really convinced this is the way of life that you want for
the rest of the time that you have. My younger daughter is one of the very
few people that I know, really a handful of people who since they were very
small knew what they wanted to be. Since she was very small she was say-
ing that she wanted to work in the theatre and that she wanted to be an actor.
For years I tried to dissuade her. I used to tell her, “You can do something
else,” until one day I asked her if this is what you really want to dedicate
your life to. That means a lot. So, for those who are coming, if you are go-
ing to dedicate your life to this and you want to be honest with yourself and
your community, go ahead and do it. You are going to enjoy it and probably
you will be able to make a living out of doing something that is enjoyable,
socially responsible, and artistic. That would be my advice.
Notes
1
For further information on the group, or the historical merger with the Puerto Rican Traveling
Theater, please visit Pregones’s website at: http://pregonesprtt.org/
2
The Desire of the Astronaut, written and directed by Alvan Colón-Lespier, with Desmar Guevara
as musical director, had its world premiere in May 2016.
3
I Like It Like That started previews on September 7, 2016, at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.
Written by David Maldonado and Waddys Jáquez, and directed by the latter, the program lists Rosalba
Rolón as dramaturg and Desmar Guevara as musical director.
4
The Marchers, inspired by previous Pregones’ works –The Wedding March (1991), ¡Ay Jesús,
Oh, Jesús! (2003), and Peccatoribus (2004) –, under the direction of Jorge B. Merced and music direction
by Desmar Guevara, had its world premiere November 11-12, 2015.
SPRING 2017 217
XXXI Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Cádiz 2016:

celebrando la memoria
Miguel Ángel Giella
Esta XXXI edición (del 21 al 29 de octubre) del Festival Iberoamericano

de Teatro (FIT) de Cádiz contó con la presencia de grupos de ocho países:
Argentina, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, México, República Dominicana,
Uruguay y España. Un año más, el FIT se convierte en una ocasión para
“saborear voces con ricos acentos de una misma lengua”, de deleitarse con
“nuevas propuestas artísticas” y de “crecer con discursos escénicos, estéti-
cos y éticos, que sirven para relax del alma y alimento de la conciencia”, en
palabras de su director Pepe Bablé.
El bailaor gaditano Eduardo Guerrero inauguró esta nueva edición en
el Gran Teatro Falla con El callejón de los pecados, que alude a un espacio
mítico local, el Callejón del Duende, donde se inspiró para crear este montaje
en el que se pudo valorar la gran técnica del bailaor y la complejidad de su
estética. El espectáculo une el ritmo del taranto, los tangos o los tientos con el
martinete o la soleá. El callejón de los pecados se compone de varios cuadros
superpuestos; cada uno de estos cuadros tienen su propia identidad marcada
tanto por la música en vivo (dos guitarras, percusión y el cante de Pepe de
Pura y Emilio Florido) como por el acertado vestuario. Hacia el final, el bailaor
se llevó una larga ovación del público puesto en pie y se vio a un Guerrero
emocionado que no perdió la oportunidad para tomar la palabra y reivindicar
el lugar por derecho que el flamenco debe ocupar en el Gran Teatro Falla.
Tres puestas argentinas tuvieron lugar en Cádiz: Terrenal. Pequeño
misterio ácrata, escrita y dirigida por Mauricio Kartun; Todo piola de Gus-
tavo Tarrío y Eddy García, sobre un poema de Mariano Blatt y canciones
de Guadalupe Otheguy; y Todo lo que está a mi lado de Fernando Rubio
(Producción FIT de Cádiz-Fernando Rubio).
Terrenal. Pequeño misterio ácrata se sitúa en la pampa, en un fracasado

loteo de los años 50. Allí, Caín y su hermano, Abel, viven una versión bo-
naerense del mito bíblico. Los dos hermanos, en disputa continua, comparten
un mismo terreno dividido al medio: Caín produce pimiento morrón y acopia
riquezas. Abel, vagabundo y melancólico, les vende carnada viva (escaraba-
jos e isocas) a los pescadores que van al “Tigris” (Delta del Tigre, provincia
de Buenos Aires), vive en contacto con la naturaleza y disfruta del ocio. El
autor no sólo aborda el conflicto fratricida sino la relación de opuestos en la
dialéctica interna entre el ser y el tener. La escenografía es mínima pero muy
elocuente: un banco, un cubo, cortinados raídos como viejos telones circenses.
La iluminación cenital es puntual y hay un vestuario de trajes negros viejos
que les quedan pequeños, camisas blancas con pajaritas negras y unos som-
breros chatos. Los dos personajes, por momentos, nos recuerdan a Laurel y
Hardy. La aparición de Tatita —el abuelo gaucho con atribuciones de padre
y Dios, quien los había abandonado años atrás— completa los pasos del
relato bíblico: el del primer asesinato, el de la condena. La interpretación de
estos tres actores —Abel, Claudio da Passano; Caín, Claudio Martínez Bel;
Tatita, Rafael Bruza— con matices de clown, tocando instrumentos en vivo,
es espléndida, ya que logran construir tres formidables personajes con una
gran capacidad gestual y corporal. El texto está atravesado por innumerables
referencias a la cultura argentina—diálogos que mezclan pasajes del Martín
Fierro y de la Biblia, refranes populares, jerga gauchesca. Teatro político,
Terrenal. Pequeño misterio ácrata. Foto: Fernando Lendoiro

SPRING 2017 219
poético y de ideas; texto y montaje conforman una de las mejores puestas

que se presentaron este año en el festival.
Inspirada en un poema de Mariano Blatt, Todo piola indaga de un modo
poético y vertiginoso sobre el deseo y el amor. Los protagonistas son un chico
y una chica en pleno encuentro afectivo y corporal. Sobre el escenario vacío,
las luces intuyen diferentes espacios; dos cuerpos semidesnudos, vibrantes,
versátiles y muy expresivos. Cuerpos que danzan, que se enredan, que luchan,
que se atraen. A ellos se une la cantante y actriz Guadalupe Otheguy, que
entona un conjunto de canciones metafóricas muy bellas. Exploración física,
sensual, sentimental a partir del cuerpo y de lo erótico como aproximación
teatral muy contundente; entre ellos dos todo es posible. La ambigüedad
sexual marca el ritmo de la propuesta, ya que relata desde el encuentro de un
muchacho gay y una muchacha que emprenden juntos los sinuosos caminos
del deseo, a un muchacho y una muchacha que se encuentran en la misma
irresolución que los anteriores y que terminará con un ardiente encuentro
sexual y en una vuelta a la soledad, al dolor y al desencanto de ambos. La
poesía barrial, homosexual y descarnada de Blatt hacen de Todo piola una
puesta provocadora que derrocha energía. Magnífico el trabajo de estos dos
jóvenes que mostraron grandes cualidades actorales en la interpretación de
sus complejos y difíciles roles.
Como una intervención urbana puede definirse la propuesta escénica
Todo lo que está a mi lado del director, dramaturgo, actor y artista visual
Fernando Rubio. El autor creó el montaje después de un sueño, del recuerdo
olvidado de una historia de la infancia guardada durante veinticinco años.
A pocos metros del mar en La Alameda gaditana, se encuentran siete camas
de matrimonio blancas con sábanas, almohadas y edredones blancos. En
cada una de ellas se halla una actriz en camisón blanco que susurra sueños,
vivencias, memorias a un/a espectador/a que se encuentra junto a ella. En
esa intimidad extrema sucede la obra durante unos diez minutos. El público
vive —construye— su propia obra. Fui parte de ese público y puedo adelan-
tar que, desde el momento que uno se quita los zapatos y se introduce en la
cama, se establece con la actriz una comunicación visual, se crea un espacio
energético que produce sensaciones nuevas que convierten el hecho teatral en
una experiencia única. Todo lo que está a mi lado se ha presentado en medio
mundo; en cada ciudad, Rubio trabaja con actrices locales.
Un año más llegó al FIT de Cádiz la obra ganadora del (sexto) Festival
Iberoamericano de Teatro Joven de Las Condes de Santiago de Chile, que
organiza la Municipalidad de Las Condes. En este caso se trató de la Compa-
Todo lo que está a mi lado. Foto: Víctor López
ñía Bonobo con la pieza Donde viven los bárbaros de Pablo Manzi. La obra
narra la historia de tres primos y un par de visitantes que se reúnen después
de años sin verse. El anfitrión, director de una ONG, se ve involucrado en el
extraño homicidio de una joven, hecho que desencadena la violencia entre
los invitados. Según se indica en el programa de mano, la pieza explora el
modo en que se normaliza y comprende la violencia de las relaciones huma-
nas actualmente en Chile y cómo se configura el arquetipo del enemigo que
siempre acompaña a la historia de los pueblos y civilizaciones. El texto juega
con las ambigüedades de los personajes y su discurso expone sus miserias
y sus penas. Cuatro hombres y una mujer construyen seres desprovistos de
lógica, con una suerte de incapacidad para comunicarse y con una dificultad
enorme para tomar decisiones. Esto lleva a la representación hacia un lugar
parco, serio, sobrio, aquella que evita mostrar la emoción de los personajes
y deja que las palabras por sí mismas revelen lo que allí sucede. Los cinco
actores muestran un muy buen nivel de interpretación de un texto que explicita
lo difícil y complejo que resulta la convivencia entre los humanos.
Colombia trajo a Cádiz dos excelentes montajes con contenido reivindica-
tivo. Tramaluna Teatro llevó a escena Antígonas, tribunal de mujeres, creación
ganadora de la beca Arte y Memoria de la ciudad de Bogotá —una beca que
SPRING 2017 221
estimula la creación artística entre víctimas del conflicto y artistas— bajo la

dirección, dramaturgia y diseño escenográfico de Carlos Zatizabal. Teatro de la
Candelaria presentó Camilo, creación colectiva con dirección de Patricia Ariza.
Unos instantes antes de la representación de Antígonas, tribunal de mu-
jeres, Zatizabal se dirigió al público asistente al Tía Norica para manifestar
su compromiso y apoyo al proceso de paz abierto en Colombia. Antígonas,
tribunal de mujeres fue creada entre artistas de la escena y mujeres vícti-
mas de casos de violación de los derechos humanos en Colombia. Entre las
víctimas se encuentran las madres de Soacha, sobrevivientes del genocidio
contra la Unión Patriótica, estudiantes víctimas de montajes judiciales y
abogadas defensoras de los derechos humanos. Estas cuatro mujeres han
convertido su dolor y su memoria en poesía, en arte y, junto con las actrices
y bailarinas, están presentes en escena. Son ellas mismas quienes cuentan
sus dolorosas historias, al tiempo que muestran objetos personales de seres
queridos que han desaparecido —una fotografía, una camisa, un juguete, una
biblia. Completan la puesta cuadros de danza y cánticos que atenúan el dolor
y el peso de lo que allí se está narrando. Integran el montaje proyecciones
de imágenes que denuncian —sobre un ciclorama envolvente dispuesto en
semicírculo— los abusos cometidos y señalan con nombre y apellido a los
victimarios. Antígonas, tribunal de mujeres es un fragmento de la resistencia
de las mujeres de Colombia y un clamor por la paz, apuntaba Zatizabal en
uno de los foros, convencido que el teatro puede y debe contribuir a ese pro-
ceso de paz todavía incompleto. Y apostillaba: ¡Acuerdos ya! La obra tuvo
repercusión en los medios españoles.1
Bajo la dirección de Patricia Ariza, el grupo Teatro de la Candelaria creó
Camilo. El montaje combina teatro, vídeo y elementos del performance y del
teatro experimental. La música en vivo tiene un papel privilegiado, lleno de
ritmos folclóricos, como los cantos de vaquería y las guabinas, además de varios
tangos y de la música que acompaña las coreografías. La obra es una exploración
emotiva de la vida del sacerdote, sociólogo, político y, finalmente, insurgente
Camilo Torres. Un nutrido grupo de actores y actrices —trece protagonistas
encarnan diferentes versiones del sacerdote— fueron los encargados de vestir
la túnica sacerdotal negra, recreando distintos episodios que marcaron la tra-
yectoria vital de este personaje emblemático. La puesta en escena hace énfasis
en los principales conflictos que rodean al personaje, entre ellos su desacuerdo
con la forma en que la Iglesia trataba los problemas sociales de su país, algo
que lo llevó a formar el Frente Unido del Pueblo y a entrar en la guerrilla del
Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN). El cuerpo de Torres está oculto para sus
seguidores, “desaparecido”. Nosotros, en un acto de fe en la memoria, prestamos,

como dice uno de los actores, nuestro cuerpo para su búsqueda y presencia. En
palabras de Patricia Ariza, la pieza rescata desde una concepción humanista
la obra de Camilo Torres y un mensaje de paz, como un aporte a la memoria
y la reconciliación tan necesarias en un país sumido aún en la confrontación.
Teatro del Azoro presentó Made in Salvador . . . Y de bordar en bordar
se me fue la vida, de Luis Felpeto, Egly Larreynaga y Paola Miranda. En uno
de los países más violentos del mundo, El Salvador, tiene lugar la dolorosa
historia de cuatro mujeres que se dedican al bordado a domicilio. Durante una
jornada —de 16 o 17 horas por un salario mísero de $1.80— bordan a mano
hermosas figuras que luego en la maquila —fábricas textiles que abundan en
toda Centroamérica y que se encargan de ensamblar piezas de vestidos— son
empaquetadas para su exportación. Teatro del Azoro trabaja en una línea de
investigación profunda que utiliza herramientas de la antropología, del pe-
riodismo y del teatro documental. La obra se basa en hechos reales y a partir
de ellos surge la dramaturgia. Es así como durante un año los miembros del
grupo estuvieron visitando Santo Tomás y Panchimalco, en donde hay una
importante población de mujeres bordadoras que trabajan para las maquilas
desde sus casas. Con todo ese material cuatro magníficas actrices componen
cuatro estremecedoras historias de mujeres que debido a sus circunstancias
sociales son víctimas de la indefensión y de un sistema de producción que las
convierte en esclavas. Unas cuantas chapas onduladas, cuatro sillas en mal
Camilo, creación colectiva de Teatro de la Candelaria. Foto: Carlos Lema

SPRING 2017 223
estado, un neumático usado, un cubo, una escoba y unos cuantos cacharros

desplegados en el escenario sirven para ubicarnos en la extrema marginalidad
en la que viven. Las cuatro mujeres dialogan entre ellas y con sus familiares
—ausentes en la escena— a veces con suma crudeza, otras, cargadas de humor.
La obra finaliza con las cuatro actrices haciéndose eco de la explotación de
miles de mujeres trabajadoras que en otros países atraviesan circunstancias
similares —Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, China, Indonesia, Bangladés,
Filipinas—, mientras el público de pie les dedicaba un prolongado aplauso.
Desde México llegó SA’AS TUN, que presentó Del manantial del co-
razón, escrita y dirigida por Conchi León, quien también actúa en la pieza.
El espectáculo de teatro testimonial yucateco fue creado a partir de una in-
vestigación que compila rituales y cuidados pre- y post-parto de las mujeres
yucatecas y el uso de la herbolaria que ayuda a aligerar el parto, así como los
rituales y cuidados que se realizan en la primera infancia a las niñas y niños
yucatecos, todos ellos basados en las creencias populares y el sincretismo de
lo maya con lo católico. La escenografía tiene forma de cuadrilátero, con un
centro ceremonial en cada esquina que contienen ropa, utilería y unas piezas
en el interior que cumplen diversas funciones; el público está situado en cada
lado. Cuatro mujeres entran en silencio en la escena; visten tradicionales
huipiles y sandalias o chanclas. Tres de ellas se acomodan en el centro: es el
banco de una iglesia donde se celebra una misa. La cuarta se sienta en una
de las esquinas, marcando pautas y canalizando el ritmo con un sonajero
de semillas. Las vecinas cuentan sus problemas familiares, ironizan con
humor, narran sus historias y van tejiendo los percances de sus vidas. De las
historias que cuentan hay dos muy emotivas; una, el nacimiento de un niño
con Síndrome de Down; otra, la muerte de un pequeño y su entierro, donde
se sincretizan creencias mayas e imaginarias del mundo cristiano —velas,
tijeras, cruces de madera, flores, almudes y la figura del Divino Niño. Hacia el
final cabe destacar la participación del público en la ceremonia del Hetzmeek
(bautizo maya), con la presencia de un bebé montado en la cadera de su madre
y de cinco espectadores que hacen la función de padrinos con ofrendas a la
criatura; es una hermosa ceremonia que emana poesía. Teatro de la memoria,
teatro testimonial dedicado al rescate de las tradiciones y costumbres, algunas
milenarias, de la rica cultura del pueblo maya.
La compañía mexicana Los Tristes Tigres puso en escena Algo de un
tal Shakespeare de Adrián Vázquez, un divertimento que aborda de manera
irreverente tres obras emblemáticas del dramaturgo inglés. Una mesa de
acero de una cocina industrial ocupa el escenario donde un actor (Adrián
Del manantial del corazón. Foto: Víctor López
Vázquez) y una actriz (Sara Pinet), protegidos con cascos de bicicleta, coderas
y rodilleras, y “armados” con cuchillos filosos y aspas de batidora, recrean
la historia de Romeo y Julieta en un lenguaje coloquial. Los personajes están
“construidos”—esculpidos, dando cortes precisos y rápidos— durante la
representación a base de verduras, tomates, cebollas, berenjenas y diversas
frutas. A este trabajo artesanal le acompañan sus diálogos. Le sigue Macbeth
en forma de cuentacuentos a dos voces con el fuego, el agua y la pintura
como elementos escénicos. Finaliza con Titus Andrónicus, en la que con
movimientos corporales, gritos y carreras, recrean, de pie o sobre la mesa
de trabajo, la guerra y el horror. Es una propuesta lúdica en la que un actor y
una actriz ponen en escena, de forma accesible y divertida, con imaginación y
humor, con un ritmo ágil y vertiginoso, tres obras clave de uno de los grandes
escritores dramáticos de la literatura universal.
Freddy Ginebra —gestor cultural y director de Casa de Teatro, perio-
dista, escritor y cuentista dominicano— se unió a Víctor Víctor —laureado
cantautor dominicano— y a Juan Francisco Ordoñez —guitarrista y director
musical— para crear el espectáculo Él canta, yo cuento, de su autoría, en el
que se mezclan boleros, bachatas y canciones nostálgicas en una noche llena
SPRING 2017 225
de ternura, emociones y ocurrencias, que fueron del agrado del numeroso

público que se reunió en el Centro Municipal de Flamenco “La Merced”.
La ira de Narciso del dramaturgo franco-uruguayo Sergio Blanco es un
monólogo en primera persona que relata la estancia del autor en la ciudad de
Liubliana, donde es invitado para impartir una conferencia magistral sobre el
mito de Narciso. El también dramaturgo, director y actor uruguayo Gabriel
Calderón es el encargado de interpretar —mediante una técnica que oscila
entre la narración, la conferencia y la confesión— al único protagonista de
la obra: Sergio Blanco. La acción tiene lugar en una habitación de un hotel
de la capital de Eslovenia y relata los preparativos para la conferencia y
los diversos encuentros que mantiene el personaje con un joven actor de la
industria pornográfica eslovena que acaba de conocer. Por otro lado, un mis-
terio policial revela, de forma paulatina, un crimen violento que tuvo lugar
en esa misma habitación. El espacio escénico es una gran pantalla de piezas
audiovisuales, algunas sillas y una larga mesa blanca con dos computadoras,
una impresora, varios objetos y el Ulises de Joyce, entre otros libros. El autor
convierte lo vivido en ficción, partiendo de una experiencia y transformándola
en algo distinto: la autoficción, la que parte de un hecho real para contar una
mentira. La narración surge y se manifiesta con un ritmo que conmueve,
perturba, inquieta. Revela los demonios y los tormentos del creador: la sole-
La ira de Narciso. Foto: Víctor López

dad, la angustia, la sexualidad, las perversiones, las adicciones, el miedo a la

muerte. Todo ello y más, Calderón lo expresa con convicción y excelencia.
Teatro del Barrio (España) presentó El rey de Alberto San Juan. La obra es
una ficción que alude al anterior jefe de Estado español, el Rey Juan Carlos I.
La escenografía consiste en una mesita, un sofá rojo con una pata rota apoyada
sobre unos libros en el centro del escenario —¿metáfora del trono que se hunde
en sus cimientos?— y un colchón al fondo desde el que habla algún personaje.
La puesta se inicia con un Juan Carlos espantado, sentado en el sillón rojo; lleva
los pantalones por los tobillos. Finaliza con su muerte: suenan los tres golpes
preceptivos sobre su ataúd, el rey no responde, ha muerto. La pieza relaciona
la figura de Juan Carlos con algunos de los sucesos más significativos —que
cuestionan su reinado— de la historia moderna de España, la de los últimos
cuarenta años. Durante la representación, los tres actores adoptan diferentes
personajes, entre los que destacan Luis Bermejo en el papel de Juan Carlos
I, Alberto San Juan en el del dictador y Manuel Solo en el de Salvador Puig
Antich, el último preso condenado a muerte por garrote vil durante la dictadura
de Franco. Teatro del Barrio propone un notable ejercicio de memoria histórica
que invita a la reflexión. Magnífica puesta en escena y buen trabajo actoral, con
una gran carga de humor y dramatismo.
El grupo español Titzina puso en escena Distancia siete minutos de Diego
Lorca y Pako Merino. Se trata de una tragicomedia que narra el encuentro de
un juez, Félix, y su padre en el domicilio familiar. Dicho encuentro coincide
cronológicamente con el envío y aterrizaje del robot espacial Curiosity. El
entorno de los juicios donde el joven juez (Lorca) tiene que lidiar con gente
de lo más diversa y la convivencia entre padre e hijo —marcada por una
falta de comunicación con su progenitor— son la excusa para abordar temas
fundamentales como la justicia, la felicidad, la comprensión del dolor y las
relaciones humanas. Prácticamente sin decorado —dos mesas convertibles
en pizarra y un sofá— y con un minimalismo máximo en la iluminación —no
hay oscuros, sólo luz blanca— estos dos actores sobresalen en su actuación
hablando de lo cotidiano, cambiando de registro de una escena a otra, o
transformándose en diferentes personajes de un instante a otro (Merino). Se
observa un trabajo de investigación bien documentado cuyo resultado es de
lo más óptimo.
Varuma Teatro (España) presentó Ns/Nc de Jorge Barroso “Bifu”, un relato
escénico difuso en el que el flamenco, el circo, la performance y el baile se
funden con la música de los Balcanes. En el escenario hay un armario con dos
puertas desde donde salen la bailaora Yasaray Rodríguez y la cantaora Roa
SPRING 2017 227
de Algeciras, que la acompaña. La puesta, al acudir a fuentes referenciales

tan dispares, produjo un cierto desconcierto entre el público del Falla que
despidió el espectáculo con un tímido aplauso.
La veterana compañía catalana Els Joglars (constituida en 1961) puso
en escena ZENIT. La realidad a su medida de Ramón Fontserè y Martina
Cabanas, un montaje en el que centran su mirada crítica en los medios de
comunicación. Ambientada en la redacción de un “gran periódico” y con
una escenografía minimalista en la que las luces juegan un papel importante,
la puesta nos muestra el día a día de los periodistas convertidos en media
workers, la realidad que verdaderamente esconden y la manipulación de
los contenidos. El espectáculo es típicamente Els Joglars, del que hemos
visto muchos montajes: arremete contra los medios, satiriza el periodismo
que desdeña la ética, y lo hace apoyado en un excelente texto y elenco, con
escenas pautadas musicalmente que destilan mordacidad. Un año más, el
público gaditano no faltó a la cita y disfrutó del espectáculo (lleno absoluto)
en el Gran Teatro Falla.
Dos días después, en el mismo Falla, tuvo lugar el cierre de esta edición
del festival con otra veterana de los escenarios, la reconocida y laureada actriz
española Concha Velasco, que con la puesta de Reina Juana dio vida a la que
fuera hija de los Reyes Católicos. En la madrugada del once al doce de abril
de 1555, la noche de su muerte, Juana I de Castilla, Juana la Loca, pide ver
Concha Velasco en Reina Juana. Foto: Sergio Parra

a su confesor, Francisco de Borja. Ante la mirada imaginaria del religioso, la

reina española, encerrada en el palacio-casona-cárcel de Tordesillas —primero
por orden de su padre, Fernando el Católico, y después por orden de su hijo
el rey Carlos I— se nos presenta caracterizada por la falta de adecuación a
la realidad, pero también por un temperamento indómito y transgresor. Du-
rante la confesión relata y recrea los episodios más importantes de su vida:
los más felices y los más emotivos, pero, sobre todo, los más dolorosos y los
más terribles de una vida plagada de miserias. Magnífico el texto de Ernesto
Caballero, acertada dirección de Gerardo Vera, brillante actuación, perfecta
dicción la de Concha Velasco, que nos deslumbra y conmueve en muchas
escenas en las que revive momentos trascendentales de este personaje mítico
e histórico que se llamó Juana I de Castilla.
Entre los espectáculos españoles de calle figuran: Deabru Beltzak con
Su à feu, de Garbitxu; Circ Bover con Vincles, de Tiá Jordá; A la Sombrita,
teatro de “pocas luces”, con Cuentos de pocas luces, de José Diego Ramírez
Pérez; Xa Teatre con The Audition; Teloncillo Teatro con Olas; Azar Teatro
con Sancho en Barataria, de Miguel de Cervantes con adaptación de textos
de Mercedes Asenjo; y La Revolución de las Mariposas con Yo también soy
Frida, homenaje de acogida a las Madres de Soacha, de Patricia Garzón.
Dentro de las actividades paralelas que se llevaron a cabo se hallan: el
XX Encuentro de Mujeres de Iberoamérica en las Artes Escénicas; coordi-
nados por Eberto García Abreu se celebraron los Foros de Creadores y el X
Encuentro de Investigación Teatral Cruce de Criterios; en el Salón de Plenos
del Ayuntamiento de Cádiz se entregó el XVII Premio FIT de Cádiz Atahualpa
del Cioppo al Teatro La Candelaria de Colombia, en reconocimiento a sus
cincuenta años de trayectoria teatral. Al aceptar el premio, Patricia Ariza
señaló el apoyo a los Acuerdos de Paz: “Si ganamos la paz, ese será el relato
de Colombia, al que hemos intentado contribuir”.2
Carleton University
Notas
1
Ver: Cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2016/11/02/actualidad/1478105613_626625.html
2
Ver: www.diariodecadiz.es/ocio/Candelaria-premio-reclamando-acuerdos-Colombia_0_1076892585.
html
SPRING 2017 229
Juan Radrigán: su trayectoria e inquietudes
Pedro Bravo-Elizondo
El fallecimiento de Juan Radrigán Rojas (Antofagasta 1937- Santiago

2016) me retrotrae a 1982, año en que le hiciera una entrevista, la cual com-
parto con ustedes. Radrigán dio a conocer sus primeras obras a fines de los
70. Al viajar a Chile a comienzos de 1982 me advierten: “No debes dejar
de ver Hechos consumados de Radrigán”, estrenada en septiembre de 1981.
La vi en el patio de una entidad social. La mayoría de los asistentes eran
jóvenes. El autor estaba presente y al solicitarle una entrevista, me pidió que
la hiciéramos en su casa. Fue interesante conversar con Radrigán, simple,
amable, de 45 años, mediana estatura y voz suave. Vivía en la Avenida La
Paz, barrio cercano al cementerio y a la Vega. Disponía de tiempo pues estaba
cesante desde 1973.
Al morir su padre —Radrigán tenía seis años— empieza un largo sub-
sistir con profesiones o “pegas” que van desde el hacer cajones en La Vega
a pintor, carpintero, desabollador, obrero textil y librero. Su formación es
autodidacta. La inclinación a la literatura proviene de mucho tiempo atrás y
el teatro como forma de expresión le pareció la más ajustada al momento,
lo más directo. En 1960, en el primer número de la revista Quilodrán, que
dirigió Luis Rivano, apareció su cuento “El nacimiento del miedo”. En él
ya está presente los motivos que desarrollará en su producción dramática a
contar de 1979: la vida de los seres humildes, los olvidados y su lucha con-
tra la miseria tanto material como espiritual. Los pobres, sostiene Radrigán,
siempre están solos, “como el cielo, la piedad y los perros”. Y quién mejor
que él lo sabe. Radrigán es a los pobres lo que Egon Wolff, Sergio Vodanovic
y Fernando Debesa son a la burguesía y la clase media chilenas en la drama-
turgia nacional. Cuando se conversa con él, sus observaciones las plantea
como algo distanciado y ajeno a la realidad que vive él mismo. A algunos
les ha llamado la atención que todas sus obras estén ambientadas en lugares
miserables. Radrigán replica que “vicios y virtudes son los mismos entre ricos
y pobres, pero están más nítidos y puros entre los pobres”. Continúa, diciendo
que “la dignidad —pieza fundamental de Hechos consumados— en el pobre
está más pura y más pristina, en el sentido primitivo y claro. Ellos no tienen
los problemas de incomunicación ni todo eso. Ellos tienen el problema del
hambre”. La pobreza, tema de Radrigán, no es una creación de los últimos
años en Chile, pero como lo expresa uno de los personajes en El invitado,
“[l]os echó de toas partes: primero de la casa encachá que teníamos cuando
yo era desabollador, de la ropa que usamos, de la calle, de la comía”. El
“invitado”, personaje que no aparece en escena, se introdujo en sus casas y
en sus vidas, apoderándose lentamente no sólo del espacio vital, sino de sus
existencias. No se necesita ser adivino para identificar al “invitado” en los
años 80. Él tiene algo que decir, siente la necesidad. Huye “a todo caballo
de lo panfletario, pues éste es de momento nada más”.
Su experiencia teatral son las lecturas. Piensa que si hubiese estudiado
teatro formalmente “sería más analítico y demagogo”. Está consciente el
dramaturgo de su papel en la sociedad: “Tengo, sin embargo, muy claras dos
cosas: a pesar de la Biblia, Don Quijote y los poetas, no vamos a arreglar el
mundo escribiendo, y que sin la existencia del arte, ese mundo que no pode-
mos arreglar sería gris, mudo y vacío”. Sus obras no las necesita investigar.
Conoce bien los problemas que plantea. Para su primera pieza le resultó
fácil encontrar un grupo que se interesara por Testimonios de las muertes de
Sabina; el teatro de El Angel, Ana González y Arnaldo Berríos fueron los
encargados de representarla.
En una carta de 1998, Radrigán me anunciaba: “La obra que te envié,
El príncipe desolado, no será posible montarla en Chile; dicen que es contra
la Iglesia, contra los milicos, contra el Bien, contra demasiadas cosas. Así
que por lo menos, léela. Se vuelve nuevamente a las tinieblas. ¿O se ha per-
manecido en ella gracias al dios supremo de las armas, el Capitán General,
el Innombrable?” Permaneció fiel a sus principios. Su fallecimiento, como
puede observarse en la prensa, ha conmovido no sólo a los círculos teatrales
en Chile; el gobierno decretó duelo nacional el martes, 18 de octubre, día
de sus funerales.
Wichita State University

SPRING 2017 231
Otra pérdida para el Teatro Nacional de Chile: Egon Wolff
Pedro Bravo-Elizondo
Cuando tuve que determinar un campo de especialización durante mi

doctorado en la Universidad de Iowa, escogí el teatro latinoamericano. Razón:
mi padre y su hermano Nazario fueron actores del conjunto anarquista Ateneo
Obrero, de Iquique. En 1963 tuve ocasión de ver Los invasores de Egon Wolff
bajo la dirección de Víctor Jara. Todo esto a cuenta del fallecimiento a los
noventa años de uno de los dramaturgos más sólidos de la escena nacional
chilena. El interés por su teatro me llevó a una recolección de lo que estimé
los mejores artículos sobre su producción dramática, tanto chilenos como
norteamericanos, La dramaturgia de Egon Wolff. Interpretaciones críticas
(1971-1981). En mi primer regreso a Chile en 1980, fui a ver la representa-
ción de José. Una llamada telefónica me pone en contacto con él, y accede
a brindar parte de su tiempo para una conversación que se realizó en el Café
Colonia en Mac lver con Agustinas. Físicamente recuerda a Curt Jurgens,
pero su chilenidad brota de su lenguaje y manerasv —espontáneo, abierto,
no trepida en mencionar casos y nombres para ilustrar su argumentación.
La conversación se enfoca en José, su última obra estrenada en el Teatro
Municipal por la Compañía Teatro de Cámara.
Al preguntarle el por qué del largo silencio, menciona que Flores de
papel (1970) le produjo una experiencia traumática con su público, que no
reaccionó, no comprendió, sino la consideró una obra hermética. Agrega que,
sin embargo, en Europa, atrajo la atención de diversos productores, siendo
representada en Dinamarca, Suecia, Noruega, Finlandia y Grecia. Rodeado
de una cierta actitud sospechosa por el público y su medio ambiente, Wolff se
recluyó autoralmente, pero para un hombre cuyo trabajo real es la literatura y
no la ingeniería química, esto era un imposible. Precisaba seguir adelante en
su producción y optó por lo que él denomina “obras cordiales”, no conflicti-
vas, simples estudios de la vida, cosas humanas, de donde surgieron Kinder-
garten (1977) y Espejismos (1978). En declaraciones periodísticas, justificó

este tipo de drama, comentando respecto a Espejismos que “[a]ntes había en
mis obras una intención de crítica social que se sobreponía al conflicto y al
desarrollo del tema; ahora he dejado que la situación surja de los personajes
mismos y que ellos la resuelvan”. En 1970 expresó que “[d]espués de todo
uno escribe porque hay cosas que lo inquietan, lo angustian terriblemente
y hay necesidad de comunicarlas. De ahí a convencerse que las cosas salen
bien, hay un gran paso”.
Conversamos sobre José. El protagonista ha vivido en Estados Unidos,
de donde retorna después de varios años. Su familia —su abuelo, su madre
y su hermana— vive en la casa de su cuñado, un poderoso industrial que
ejerce un control total sobre la familia. El abuelo vive relegado en un asilo
de monjas. José llega a este medio y trata de despertar lo que está dormido en
su familia, el cariño y amor hacia el abuelo, además de salvar a su hermana
menor de un casamiento por conveniencia y renovar en su madre la alegría
por la existencia y el amor. En su vida en Chicago, en un medio enajenado,
José rompe con el esquema y se refugia en una filosofía humanista y cristia-
na. Regala su apartamento a unos necesitados y vive con unos “hermanos”,
quienes le dan el calor, el ímpetu para seguir viviendo. Agrega Wolff: “Es
un poco el personaje de Jack Kerouac en On the Road”. Wolff insiste en que
José debe tener algo de personaje bíblico. Lo dramático, lo terrible para Wolff
es que en el momento actual, en la mente de los burgueses y semi-burgueses
que existen en Chile, ya no cabe la posibilidad de que el amor sea el idioma
entre los hombres.
Anochece en Santiago y Egon Wolff tiene sus compromisos. Yo soy sólo
un turista en búsqueda de algunas raíces, en un país que desconozco, después
de años de ausencia. Nos despedimos con un fuerte apretón de manos. Al
caminar por las calles santiaguinas no me abandona la escena final, marcada
por la salida de José y el abuelo de la casa en que el lucro prima. El pasado
y el futuro no tienen cabida en esa sociedad en que únicamente el presente
rige sus vidas. Las palabras con las cuales se cierra el telón son simples y
profundas. Al ofrecérseles un taxi para dirigirse a su nueva morada, respon-
den: “Tenemos todo el día; nos iremos caminando”.
Wichita State University

SPRING 2017 233
Miriam Colón: Puerto Rican Icon and Theatrical Traveler
Jason Ramírez
Miriam Colón, Puerto Rico’s greatest theatrical export, was born on

August 20, 1936, in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Her international career spanned
more than fifty years and her appearances on the stage were balanced with a
productive television and film career. She served as a representative of Hol-
lywood’s Golden Age studio system of the 1950s, performing with the likes
of Marlon Brando and Karl Malden, as well as mentoring thousands of actors
inspired by her legacy as the founder of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre.
In short, Miriam Colón was a living legend and a Latina icon responsible for
the careers of countless performers, playwrights, and practitioners who fol-
lowed in her footsteps. Miriam Colón shuffled off her mortal coil on March
3, 2017, in her beloved, adopted New York City.
While a child, Miriam experienced a profound feeling of separation when
her mother and father divorced and she moved to San Juan’s public housing
project, La residencia de las casas. As a child she was unaware of theatre,
chiefly because of the structured decision-making of her mother. As Miriam
recounts, “My mother was the most wonderful woman and mother in the
world but things like the theatre and plays, even storytelling, were not a part
of my upbringing. For her, it didn’t matter what field I went into because she
would be supportive regardless. She is my single greatest inspiration.” This
meant for the young Miriam a life where determination, and the strong role
of a single woman, influenced the decisions she would make as an actress,
businesswoman, and producer.
During her early teens at the Ramon Baldoriatry de Castro School she met
Marcos Colón, a University of Puerto Rico drama student, who was assigned to
direct a production by the head of the Theatre Department, Leopoldo Santiago
Lavandero. Though Miriam had no experience with plays, she looked forward
to socializing with her friends in a non-academic setting and volunteered to
audition. Soon, Miriam was cast in her first play and thus began her love for
the theatrical arts. The teenage Miriam became obsessed with the process of
creation and extremely depressed when the play was over, misunderstanding the
fact that Marcos Colón would move on to direct plays at other schools. Upon
her insistence, he instructed her to send a letter to the head of the department
at UPR. Luckily, Lavandero had seen Miriam in the play and allowed her, as
a junior high school student, to attend classes at the university, with the direc-
tive to observe only. Soon, Miriam was performing in university productions
alongside such talented practitioners as director Victoria Espinosa.
During a June 2009 interview in her beautiful 94th Street brownstone,
Miriam informed me it was her initial work with UPR’s touring company
that sparked the idea for the creation of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre:
“My desire to perform came from a necessity to bring theatre to the people,
to the community. When the University of Puerto Rico’s Touring Company
would go into the small towns in Puerto Rico, I would see their faces light
up. It was like the circus for them. We were creating the strongest commu-
nity bond…through theatre.” After finally matriculating at the University of
Puerto Rico and studying with many of the professors she had worked with
as a high school student, the university created a scholarship to send Miriam
to study at the Dramatic Workshop and Technical Institute with the iconic
Erwin Piscator. This scholarship guaranteed that Miriam would perform in
New York City.
While studying at the Institute, Miriam began making the “rounds” to
agents and casting directors as well as befriending some of the most popular
working actors in New York. Eventually a colleague asked if she would be
interested in becoming his partner for an audition at the famed Actor’s Stu-
dio. Miriam, unaware of the stature of the institution, agreed and following
her audition asked to speak with Lee Strasberg. Miriam, as feisty as ever,
entered his office with an album of pictures and Spanish language reviews,
believing Strasberg was “a casting director or agent.” As chance would have
it, Strasberg invited her into the Studio, prompting Miriam to experience its
breadth of talent and, subsequently, become the first Latina/o member of the
Studio’s prestigious Board of Directors.
Miriam’s move to New York City eventually led to her participation in
the premiere of René Marqués’s La Carreta. After being sought by producer
Roberto Rodríguez Suárez, she signed on as an original company member of
the production, first performed in a small church in Manhattan and eventu-
ally, at the Hunts Point Palace in the Bronx. Miriam found herself performing
SPRING 2017 235
for the Nuyorican community that,

for the first time, saw itself repre-
sented on the commercial stage.
La Carreta would become the first
theatrical happening detailing the
Puerto Rican emigrant audience
and allowed Miriam to construct a
vision for herself as a producer. Her
dedication to Marqués’s play made
it possible for Miriam to work with
legendary director Lloyd Richards,
fellow Puerto Rican actress Lucy
Boscana, and then-unknown actor
Raúl Julia.
Simultaneously, Miriam’s bud-
ding Hollywood career prompted
her casting in many Western serials,
including Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will
Travel, and Bonanza and an even-
tual pairing with lifelong friend and
Archivo de Teatro Avante, Premio a Toda Una Vida Studio alum Marlon Brando in the
de Dedicacion a las Artes 2007 film One Eyed Jacks. How ironic it
is that this accomplished, classically
trained actress, would eventually become best known for her depiction of
fellow Studio alum Al Pacino’s patient, but hardened, mother in the Brian
DePalma epic Scarface (1981). Though a Hollywood career seemed a wise
economic choice, Miriam realized that New York City was where her heart
was, and she returned to the Broadway stage on three separate occasions dur-
ing her life, as well as starring in dozens of Spanish-language plays ranging
from the Golden Age to Lorca.
It was, however, Miriam’s dedication to the Latina/o community that
shaped her theatrical destiny, as she railed against the limited opportunities
for Latinos to experience professional productions in New York. In 1965,
Miriam and her husband, George Edgar, a Wall Street entrepreneur and the-
atrical producer, formed a 501© organization that toured during the hot New
York summers and focused on impoverished neighborhoods that were deemed
too “dangerous to visit.” This venture, which included dozens of Latina/o
actors, designers, and community activists came to be known as the Puerto
Rican Traveling Theatre (PRTT),

which in 1967 was given a formal
home by then Mayor John Lindsay:
a red firehouse on West 47th Street
and 8th Avenue, nestled in the heart
of the Broadway theatre district. The
Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre has
nurtured the growth of theatrical
artists and audiences who, like my-
self, saw their first positive Latino
representations on Miriam’s stage.
Miriam Colón’s vision provided an
opportunity for Latinos to partici-
pate in the communal experience of
what she called “the transformative
magic of the theatre.”
In July 2007 I was blessed to sit
Archivo de Teatro Avante, Premio a Toda Una on a panel with Nuyorican theatre
Vida de Dedicacion a las Artes 2007 expert Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez
during the International Hispanic
Theatre Festival of Miami’s (IHTF) Lifetime Achievement Award to Miriam
Colón. As academics, our focus was U.S. Latina/o Dramaturgy; the audience’s
focus was Miriam Colón. Two years later, Miriam allowed me to interview
her for an introductory essay celebrating IHTF’s 25th anniversary. Miriam’s
home was cluttered with paperwork from the upcoming PRTT summer tour
of Cinderella while at the center of the room was a beautiful bouquet from
actress Marga Gómez, filled with a unique combination of lilies of various
hues. “They are all so unique and beautiful. They must be seen to be de-
scribed,” Miriam exclaimed, holding my arm.
I too, felt the same way, but about Miriam. The difficulties of funding the
cultural arts brought the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre to a dangerous cliff
by the end of the last decade. While the theatre teetered just slightly over the
precipice, it was, once again, rescued by its community. In a consolidation with
Pregones Theatre of the Bronx, Miriam was able to retire a few years before
her death, leaving the company she founded safe for the immediate future.
In her final year on Earth, President Barack Obama awarded Miriam the
prestigious National Medal of Arts. Following the reception, Miriam noted,
“This is like a never-ending endeavor. This is what we do every day. We want
SPRING 2017 237
to continue doing theatre, bilingual theatre, in the city. I think we have a moral
obligation to reflect what is happening and what is upsetting us. And what is
making us cry and also what is making us laugh.” The rest is prologue. Rest
in peace, glorious maestra.
Suffolk County Community College (SUNY)

SPRING 2017 239
Book Reviews
Albuquerque, Severino J. and Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez, eds. Performing Brazil:

Essays on Culture, Identity, and the Performing Arts. U Wisconsin P, 2015: 305 pp.
From an academic colleague’s reaction to a roda de capoeira in New Orleans,

there came one of the main seeds of inspiration for this highly recommendable gath-
ering of 13 essays, including the captivating and elucidating introduction penned
by both editors of the volume. All verse on performances originating in or inspired
by Brazil. At the 2008 meetings of the Brazilian Studies Association, one scholar
dedicated to the study of Brazil claimed that the capoeira being performed in a Tu-
lane University foyer had “something uncanny about it” and “made no sense outside
Brazil” (15). We readers may infer that the spark caused by that colleague’s personal
discomfort in light of an alleged disconnect among the performers, the audience,
and the setting is one of the multiple questions propelling and orienting the selected
essays. Whether or not the topic of each of the essays falls perfectly into either of the
book’s indexed topics listed in the cataloging data (Brazilian arts, Brazilian ethnic
identity, Brazilian civilization), all chapters offer their own fascinating insights with
transdisciplinary academic rigor.
The contributors include senior authors, such as Bryan McCann and Lídia
Santos, and younger critics, such as Cristina F. Rosa and Benjamin Legg. Cinema,
dance, literature, music, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and theater
are discussed in connection with class consciousness, curatorial practices, ethnicity,
gender issues, folklore, protest art, and the zeitgeist of several eras, but mostly from
1950 to the present day. Performing Brazil, explain the editors, “creates an analytical
geo-performative space that links Brazil to the [African] diaspora and back, along
with a mixture of urban and rural tropes, and that understands performance as a
staged activity in the broadest sense of the term” (6).
Following the book’s introductory essay, Bishop-Sanchez presents in “On the
(Im)Possibility of Performing Brazil” an intricate panorama of the challenges one
faces while investigating performative acts and subjects, in general, and those as-
sociated with brasilidade, or Brazilianness, in particular. She argues, firstly, that
“performing Brazilianness is a concept that is ever evolving, nationally and interna-

tionally, in relation to live events that mold the projection of Brazil to its different
audiences, both at home and abroad” (20). She then adds that performance “is a
means to explore, develop, and challenge conceptions of national character and the
embodiment of nationness” (20). Bishop-Sanchez’s essay is laudably eye-opening in
the sense that it juxtaposes groundbreaking theories on the ways by which we analyze
(and thus “preserve”) live, under-documented, or thoroughly undocumented art, an
effort considered by some, such as Peggy Phelan, as “indomitable” (21). Despite the
ontological difficulties and academics’ widespread refusal to write about performance,
Bishop-Sanchez offers an operational definition, according to which performance “is
a visual medium couched in a specific time and space that facilitates discussion and
constitutes a basis upon which to draw” (21). Since performance projects a message
that can be construed or sensed by the spectator, actor, or performer, she adds, “it
functions as a site for interpretation and meaning” (21).
Further theoretical advances in the volume come from other scholars, such as
Fernando de Sousa Rocha. He stretches the notion of cultural cannibalism to its 21st-
century reincarnation through socioeconomic symbolism in films like Cláudio de Assis’
Mango Yellow. A discussion of Belo Horizonte-based modern dance group Corpo, in
turn, serves as a platform for the re-reading of body language, especially the ginga, as an
element that not only translates a visual composition of Brazilianness but also enhances
our understanding of the coexisting forces in transculturation, especially those detected
through the interconnections between processes of identification and corporeality.
Another distinguished contribution in Performing Brazil to the young field of
performance studies comes from the closing text written by Maria José Somerlate
Barbosa. She examines the links between elements of theatricality, such as stage
devices and dramatic language, and various attributes of prose writing in Clarice
Lispector. Barbosa focuses on what she identifies as three of the “less discussed
trademarks” of Lispector’s style that resonate with acting: performativity, the use of
the pulpit’s point of view, and the theatrical ending of her texts (271).
Apart from the cultural manifestations discussed above, Performing Brazil fea-
tures reflections on a plethora of other works and practices, including the berimbau,
bossa nova, Candomblé, Carnaval, Carmen Miranda and Sônia Braga movies, City
of God, forró, jazz, Mardi Gras, maculelê, Macunaíma, Maria Maria, the open-air
social sculpture Morrinho, the public art installation No lugar do outro, the video
art project Nome, the exhibition Sem simpatia, and the folkloric group Viva Brasil.
From the literary text and the painted canvas to the electronic make-up and visual
projection of soundbites and beyond, these are the subjects of profound, sharp, and
wide-scoped analyses in Performing Brazil, a volume that places its essays and their
authors in the forefront of performance studies and their multidisciplinary offshoots.
Dário Borim Jr.

University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth
SPRING 2017 241
Atto, Paulo. Desmontando Shakespeare. Terceira Margem, 2012: 323 pp.
Este es un libro signado por dos marcas nada ajenas a Shakespeare: la hibridez
y la maleabilidad. Una serie de tres piezas teatrales de un acto (La tierra de Calibán,
La herencia de Macbeth y Antonio y Cleopatra: el desencuentro del mirar) basadas
en obras del dramaturgo inglés abre lecturas e interpretaciones que revitalizan el lema
de un Shakespeare maleable y adaptable a todas las situaciones y a todas las épocas
históricas. Desmontando Shakespeare es, sobre todo, la crónica de un “desmontaje”
teatral que no teme, como dice el mismo Paulo Atto en su introducción, “desmitificar”
y “desacralizar” textos entronizados por la academia, con tal de “intentar captar su
significado, o su sentido, en un mundo desarraigado de sus valores más humanos
y buscando su singularidad en nuestro momento social e histórico” (41). Existen
diversos tipos de teatro (“existen ‘teatros’ y no solo Teatro”, dice Atto) y el suyo,
agrega, no es “taxidermista”. Es decir, no se plantea como tarea fijar un texto, sino
abrirlo en la práctica teatral a las más diversas e invitantes posibilidades. Atto quiere
encontrar en Shakespeare su tiempo y no recrear el tiempo en que el dramaturgo
vivió, tarea que considera imposible y vana. Para eso, dice, necesariamente hay que
desmontarlo. Esta postura coincide con la mayoría de las opiniones críticas actuales
sobre Shakespeare y los montajes de sus obras; de Stanley Fish a Stephen Greenblatt
encontramos opiniones similares a las de Paulo Atto, que podríamos resumir de la
siguiente manera: es hora de abandonar la ilusión del texto shakesperiano definitivo
y asumir sus lagunas, vacíos y ambigüedades como una ventaja más que como
una limitación. Solo así descubriremos un Shakespeare fresco y actual, ese mismo
que según Harold Bloom ha inventado para nosotros la idea de lo humano. Así, la
“lectura” más contemporánea del dramaturgo está más cerca a la noción de “obra
abierta” acuñada por Umberto Eco a comienzos de la década del 60. En ese sentido,
Shakespeare es más una semiótica que un texto fijo e inamovible, es decir, un signo
susceptible de ser leído de diferentes maneras, dependiendo de los contextos en los
que la lectura acontece. La obra es polisémica y, como señala Eco, está siempre “en
movimiento”.
Desde el punto de vista estrictamente técnico, Paulo Atto describe su práctica
como un trabajo con los actores más que con el texto. Con producciones y talleres
que tuvieron lugar en países como Brasil, España, Colombia, Ecuador, Alemania,
Suiza, México, Estados Unidos y Rusia, con “más de mil participantes en total”
(48), Atto describe su trabajo como un “proceso” del que nacen “células y partituras
gestuales” a las que se les insertan textos seleccionados a partir de “temas o modelos
predefinidos por el director con los actores” (48-49). A partir de ahí, Atto describe su
trabajo como un proceso de tres etapas. En la primera, “los actores vivenciaban los
ejercicios y las dinámicas de entrenamiento”, siendo ésta “la fase de aprehensión de
la sintaxis corporal”. La segunda etapa era “la de la construcción de la composición
corporal a partir de temas referenciales”. Por último, la tercera etapa era la de “in-
serción/montaje del texto en estas estructuras” (49). Así fue posible extraer distintos
fragmentos de las obras de Shakespeare para “establecer relaciones dialógicas para
los distintos textos y reproducir puestas en escena donde estaban, lado a lado, las
parejas Macbeth-Lady Macbeth y Romeo-Julieta”. Cuando era necesario, se inser-
taban “otros textos tanto de piezas de Shakespeare como de otros textos escritos por
el director o por los actores” (49).
Así nacieron las tres obras breves que se incluyen en el libro, compuestas por
citas textuales fragmentadas de las obras en cuestión y por textos producidos por los
actores y el director. Acorde al espíritu que anima el trabajo de Paulo Atto, no hay
jerarquías entre esas “estructuras poéticas y gestuales”, como él las llama. La rela-
ción entre la “cita” y la “glosa”, podríamos decir, es igualitaria. Como en el espacio
de una reseña no es posible resumir en detalle la trama de las obras, me limitaré a
mencionar brevemente su argumento y su propósito. La tierra de Calibán, basada en
La tempestad, fue la base para un montaje que se aproximó al “universo místico y
mágico de las tradiciones afrobahianas” de Brasil (51). Atto y sus actores quisieron
releer la obra de Shakespeare con tal de representar “otras tempestades”, como las
dicotomías civilización/barbarie, razón/instinto, amor/odio y sueño/realidad. La
herencia de Macbeth, basada en la pieza homónima, se planteó como una “traición
a la obra” en el mismo espíritu en que Macbeth traiciona a Duncan. La “herencia”
a la que alude su título es la herencia tribal de nuestro tiempo, que despierta en los
seres humanos “la sed de sangre y destrucción” (55). La novedad de este montaje
es que introduce al personaje del bufón, común en otras obras de Shakespeare, pero
ausente en Macbeth. Atto justifica su presencia (que podríamos considerar como la
mayor “traición” al texto) diciendo que “(l)a lucidez lúdica del bufón trae un humor
trágico y farsesco al montaje y, algunas veces, cierto lirismo a la decadencia moral
a la que llega el matrimonio Macbeth” (55). Tanto La tierra de Calibán como La
herencia de Macbeth fueron representadas en Brasil por el grupo de teatro Avatar.
La tercera de estas obras, Antonio y Cleopatra: el desencuentro del mirar, fue (des)
montada por Paulo Atto y sus actores bajo los auspicios del grupo Quasar Teatro de
Gijón y estrenada en el Teatro Jovellanos de la misma ciudad. La tragedia Antonio
y Cleopatra se adapta aquí a otras dicotomías que producen tensión: hombre/mujer,
Roma/Egipto (es decir, Occidente/Oriente) e incluso los roles macho/hembra, todo
resumido en la “visión” de los otros y del otro. El amor es un componente fundamental
aquí, por supuesto, pero también lo es la pasión y el poder, y la pasión por el poder.
El desmontaje explora estas polaridades hasta llegar a preguntarse por la naturaleza
misma del deseo, que no respeta fronteras ni géneros. Paulo Atto considera (con
razón) esta extraordinaria tragedia una de las más complejas de Shakespeare, y es
notorio que su desmontaje le otorgó quizás el trabajo más arduo; la expectativa del
trabajo colectivo era grande en Gijón, dice, porque el papel de Marco Antonio fue
interpretado por la actriz española Ave Hernández (56-57).
Una de las cosas más interesantes de este libro es el hecho de que se trata de una
edición bilingüe portugués-español. Para un grupo de textos y un trabajo teatral que
SPRING 2017 243
“traiciona” el original (o la ilusión del mismo, como hemos dicho), es importante

que la traducción asuma ese riesgo también. Creo que ese propósito se logra también
a cabalidad, sobre todo porque Paulo Atto considera su trabajo como un equivalente
a la traducción libre, esa que está muy cercana a la interpretación.
Desde el punto de vista de su confección, este libro también ofrece méritos de
valía: impreso en papel cuché, tiene la gracia de no ser un libro de lujo, sino una
publicación que divulga sus resultados para el alcance del mayor número posible de
lectores. Mención aparte merece el abundante material gráfico incluido (Paulo Atto
lo llama “relato fotográfico”), que da una idea de las producciones de las obras, de
su desmontaje, que es siempre un montaje en movimiento, abierto y cambiante, y
que al reinventar/reescribir/traducir a Shakespeare nos reinventa/reescribe/traduce
a nosotros mismos.
Marcelo Pellegrini
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Dubatti, Jorge. Teatro-Matriz, Teatro Liminal. Estudios de Filosofía del Teatro y

Poética Comparada. Atuel, Colección Textos Básicos, 2016: 189 pp.
Teatro-Matriz, Teatro Liminal es un estudio en el que Jorge Dubatti funda y

elabora nuevos conceptos a lo largo de su trayectoria como teatrólogo. En este
caso plantea la problematización sobre las categorías teatro-matriz y teatro liminal.
Así en primera medida realiza la pregunta ontológica sobre ¿qué entendemos por
teatro?
El libro se separa en seis capítulos, de los cuales en el primero y en el tercero
se desarrolla cabalmente la teoría, para en los otros cuatro aplicarla a diversos ejem-
plos del teatro en una variable entre espacios y tiempos. El capítulo I despliega el
primer concepto clave que es el de teatro-matriz. En él, observa que para definir
teatro se precisa reconocer otros dos términos que lo estructuran: teatralidad y trans-
teatralización (9). Por teatralidad, el autor comprende aquella capacidad del hombre
de producir y organizar una política de la mirada. La transteatralización es la exa-
cerbación y sofisticación del dominio de la teatralidad a partir de una apropiación de
las estrategias desarrolladas por el teatro. El concepto del teatro-matriz abarca “to-
dos los acontecimientos en los que se reconoce la presencia conjunta y combinada
de convivio, poesía corporal y expectación” (11). Así el concepto de teatro-matriz
implica una ampliación del término teatro pensándolo como una per-forma que
absorbe y transforma los materiales en teatro.
Mediante este término Dubatti desemboca en el concepto de teatro liminal. Pre-
viamente comprende la liminalidad como la contracara del teatro moderno. Sin em-
bargo, Dubatti da un giro: se plantea rastrear la liminalidad incluso dentro de ese tipo
de teatro moderno, del “drama absoluto”, discutiendo de ese modo con autores como
el filósofo Hegel, Wolfgang Kaiser, Peter Szondi y Emil Staiger. Asimismo define la
liminalidad como la tensión de campos ontológicos diversos en todo acontecimiento
teatral: arte/vida; ficción/no ficción; cuerpo natural/cuerpo poético; […] dramático/
no-dramático (16). Esta característica ontológica del teatro se puede observar, sostiene
Dubatti, tanto en el drama absoluto como en las vanguardias propulsadas por Alfred
Jarry, Antonin Artaud y los continuadores de la posvanguardia, entre otros.
Por otro lado define los niveles más destacables del concepto de liminalidad
dentro del teatro-matriz. Menciona y explica las tensiones entre representación,
presentación, sensación; la liminalidad en los tres cuerpos del actor; la presencia
convivial del espectador; la tensión entre la teatralidad de las prácticas sociales y el
uso poético de la teatralidad en el teatro; y la tensión entre presencia y ausencia. Así,
en el teatro antiguo grecolatino también se pueden encontrar espacios fronterizos,
por ejemplo, en la épica y la lírica, o incluso en la labor de los mimos, los histriones,
la estructura de la tragedia, de la comedia y del drama satírico.
Mediante la teoría propuesta, y el hallazgo en los teatros previos, recorre y
estudia las prácticas liminales en el teatro medieval a lo largo del capítulo II. Allí
se pregunta si es pertinente utilizar el término teatro para referirse a las prácticas
escénicas del período medieval. En el capítulo III, “Hacia una cartografía teatral
radicante y un pensamiento teatral cartografiado”, Dubatti avanza sobre la relevan-
cia de comprender al teatro como un objeto de estudio. De allí surgen las Ciencias
del Teatro que se nutren de una manera interdisciplinaria y que encuentran una serie
de singularidades sobre el teatro-matriz: que es un acontecimiento de cultura vi-
viente; que está sometido a pérdida y a duelo; que siempre requiere cuerpo viviente;
que no se puede desterritorializar; que su nivel poiético es inmanente; que aquello
se relaciona con la historia social, interna y externa; que posee formas de produc-
ción específicas; y que se relaciona con y se diferencia de las otras artes. A su vez
plantea que el saber teatral parte desde los propios artistas y su praxis. Así desarrolla
las cuatro categorías que contemplan diversas posiciones como investigador-artista,
artista-investigador, investigador participativo e investigador asociado a un artista
o equipo de artistas. Estas modalidades propician una actitud “radicante” frente al
teatro; ponen el acento en pensar lo territorial.
El libro se introduce en el capítulo IV en el mundo de Ricardo Bartís, para
observar como mediante su “teatro de estados” se genera una tensión entre la teatra-
lidad, el teatro y la transteatralización. Bartís da cuenta del artificio teatral mediante
su poética. Este autor se enfrenta a la manipulación política, que para armar su
simulacro se sirve de las técnicas de actuación. Bartís lo combate resaltando el arti-
ficio político y reclamando en su poética una mirada ironizante (85). Con la misma
intención de dar cuenta de las mecánicas y las tensiones que se producen dentro del
teatro–matriz y la liminalidad, en el capítulo V Dubatti desarrolla el concepto del
teatro como observatorio ontológico y realiza un recorrido por una serie de produc-
ciones recientes propias del teatro de la posdictadura en las que se puede observar
SPRING 2017 245
la riqueza y la multiplicidad de poéticas. Así analiza catorce obras fundantes del

teatro actual.
En el último capítulo estudia específicamente la poética de Alejandro Finzi,
investigador-artista que nutre su poética desde las vanguardias históricas, que dis-
cutían el teatro burgués, que recuperaban cuestiones del teatro premoderno e imple-
mentaban una serie de procedimientos. Pero Finzi, como posvanguardista, retoma
estas cuestiones para realizar una crítica a las políticas neoliberales, proponiendo
metáforas que lo ubican en el lugar de la resistencia (165).
Sin más, el libro de Jorge Dubatti formula desde la propuesta teórica un reco-
rrido histórico que propone desde diversas cartografías la implementación de los
términos de teatro-matriz y teatro liminal, para dar cuenta de la multiplicidad de
poéticas y de las tensiones que muchas de ellas promueven.
Jimena Cecilia Trombetta

CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires
García Barrientos, José-Luis, dir. Análisis de la dramaturgia argentina actual.

Antígona, 2016: 392 pp.
Argentina holds a prominent position in the theatre written and staged in the
Spanish-speaking world. Deeply determined by traumatic events like the Proceso de
Reorganización Nacional or the economic crisis known as the corralito, Argentina’s
theatrical life has never ceased to attract the interest of academics worldwide. This
book provides an overview of the current situation and forms part of a larger project
led by theatre specialist José-Luis García Barrientos aimed at mapping the theatrical
activity taking place nowadays in the Hispanic world.
Coordinated by Luis Emilio Abraham, the volume begins with a historical in-
troduction by Beatriz Trastoy. Oversimplifying her words, it may be said that most
Argentinian dramatists share a critical interest in the recent history of their country.
This commitment does not prevent them, though, from questioning the limits of the-
atrical representation or incorporating formal innovations. The works and playwrights
analyzed give evidence of this conciliation. Ricardo Bartís, Daniel Veronese, Javier
Daulte, Patricia Suárez, Rafael Spregelburd, Martín Giner, and Federico León are
the playwrights chosen. Seven names might not seem enough to cover the dramatic
production of a country like Argentina, yet the selection is highly pertinent and gives
the opportunity to approach the object of study without feeling overwhelmed by it.
The structure is simple but effective; every author is approached from a micro
and a macroscopic perspective. Each essay focuses on a play representative of the
dramatist’s work and then moves to a synthetic view of his/her whole dramaturgy.
This approach provides an insightful account of each dramatist’s views on theatre
and at the same time proves the soundness of García Barrientos’s analytical method,
which he terms dramatología. Fully established in Cómo se comenta una obra de

teatro (2001), this theoretical framework, indebted to Genette’s narratology, has been
gaining academic respect as its consistency and applicability become more evident.
All the analyses start from its principles, some applying them strictly, others adapt-
ing the categories. The general objective is, in any case, the same: to study the plays
from a rigorously specific instance, that is, as texts meant to be staged and, as such,
determined by the exigencies of theatrical representation.
Ignacio Gutiérrez tackles Bartís, whose position in the book points both to his
age (a little higher than that of the other authors) and his influence on the younger
generation. His discussion of the play La pesca is eloquent in its treatment of historical
and formal concerns as well as of Bartís’s debts to postmodern poetics. Veronese’s
Mujeres soñaron caballos, analyzed by Daniel Israel, can also be connected to this
search for new ways of expressing the Argentine identity. Full of psychoanalytical
resonances, dream-like sequences, and absurd dialogues, Veronese’s take on personal
and national issues, as García Barrientos’s method shows, does not neglect formal
experimentation; quite the opposite.
Less aggressive, but perhaps more imaginative, is Daulte’s play ¿Estás ahí?, bril-
liantly studied by García Barrientos. This is a supernatural comedy that, even if less
concerned with sociopolitical matters, exemplifies Daulte’s skills in his manipulation
of theatrical language. As for Patricia Suárez, it is her collection of short pieces La
Germania that draws the attention of Paulo A. Olivares. All these plays deal with
one of the ugliest episodes of the Argentinian past: the arrival of Nazi refugees under
Perón’s rule. In the second part of his analysis, Olivares links Suárez’s interest in
history with her rewriting of social, political, and cultural narratives.
Abraham’s study focuses on Spregeldburd’s Heptalogía de Hieronymous Bosch,
which is based on the Dutch painter’s Mesa de los pecados capitales, a fresco in which
nothing makes sense. La estupidez, chosen as representative of this absurdist ap-
proach, is a challenging piece that, despite its nonsensical nature, proves decipherable
in the context of the dramatological categories. The remaining playwrights, Martín
Giner and Federico Léon, tend to avoid seriousness in their tone and the building of
fictional worlds. Thus, Mauricio Tossi praises the recovery of the farsa in Giner’s
Freak Show, while Laura Raso, studying León’s Cachetazo de campo and its opposi-
tion to codified meanings, interprets it as a powerful satire of Argentinian clichés.
Much more, indeed, could be said about Análisis de la dramaturgia argentina
actual, one of the most important titles on Hispanic theatre of the present decade.
It achieves more than satisfactorily both goals that guide not only the book but the
whole project by giving a fair idea of the theatre composed and performed in a de-
termined area of the Hispanic world and by confirming the maturity of dramatología
as a valid theoretical approach to theatrical imitation.
Miguel Carrera Garrido

Marie Curie-Skłodowska University of Lublin (Poland)
SPRING 2017 247
Rozik, Eli. Las raíces del teatro. Repensando el ritual y otras teorías del origen.
Prólogo de Jorge Dubatti. Trad. Nora Lía Sormani y Ricardo Dubatti. Editorial
Colihue, 2014: 379 pp.
Eli Rozik es uno de los teatrólogos más reconocidos del mundo. Desde la Uni-
versidad de Buenos Aires se trabaja actualmente en la difusión de su obra en toda
Latinoamérica, continente con el que Rozik no ha perdido sus vínculos. Nacido en
la Argentina en 1932, emigró a Israel en 1953 y es actualmente profesor emérito
de estudios de teatro de la Facultad de las Artes de la Universidad de Tel Aviv. Se
desempeñó, además, como jefe del Departamento de Estudios de Teatro y Decano
de la misma universidad. Especializado en teoría teatral, su trabajo se ha centrado
principalmente en los aspectos no verbales de este arte. Como parte de dichos estu-
dios, se encuentra el cuestionamiento de los orígenes del teatro, tema desarrollado
en el volumen que aquí comentamos.
En este trabajo, Eli Rozik parte de una doble tesis: que el origen del teatro no
está ni en el rito ni en la performance, y que sí está en una competencia cognitiva
del ser humano. Para ello, organiza la estructura del libro en tres partes. En la pri-
mera, analiza las teorías de los orígenes rituales. La premisa de que el teatro no pudo
haberse originado en el ritual se basa principalmente en el hecho de que el ritual y el
teatro son entidades culturales en dos niveles ontológicos distintos. Mientras que el
ritual es definido como un tipo de macro-acto/acción, con intenciones específicas y
efectos esperados en el mundo divino o en el terrenal, el teatro es considerado como
un medio cultural de representación y comunicación que puede producir descripciones
de actos y, por acumulación, de mundos. Por lo tanto, el ritual puede optar o no por
usar el medio teatral. Asimismo, afirma que mientras que los rituales son históricos,
el teatro es ahistórico y forma parte de la propia naturaleza del hombre.
Para sostener esta tesis, Rozik se encarga primero de refutar las visiones más
clásicas sobre el origen del teatro, partiendo de la Escuela de Cambridge en general
y Henry Murray en particular. Para ello, se vale de las primeras objeciones que se
le han hecho, es decir, las de Sir Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge en la década de
1920. La principal impugnación estriba en que la postulación del ditirambo como
origen del teatro no se ocupa del teatro como medio. ¿Cómo entra el mito heroico
en el ritual dionisíaco? No hay una respuesta satisfactoria. Y si el teatro nace del
ritual ¿por qué no sostener que la narración se originó también allí, como sí lo hacen
con respecto a la tragedia? Además, si la tragedia forma parte del ritual dionisíaco
aún en el siglo V a.C. por desarrollarse durante las Grandes Dionisíacas, las obras
formarían parte de un ritual que critica sus propias creencias.
La segunda parte del libro se centra en las teorías de la performance, incluyendo
al carnaval y al juego. Enlazando con la crítica a los estudios rituales, cuestiona la
distinción entre chamán y actor que realiza Michael Kirby, ya que mientras la ex-
pectación del ritual es fundamentalmente un tipo de acción, la expectación en teatro
es fundamentalmente un tipo de pensamiento (al tratar la tercera parte del libro,

volveremos sobre este término). Por ese motivo, si bien en tiempos posteriores el
cristianismo y el judaísmo recurrieron al teatro, rito y teatro tensaron las fronteras
pero no se anularon mutuamente. Caso similar es el del carnaval, en tanto inversión
de los fundamentos del statu quo. Hermanadas a las teorías del ritual, están las de
Richard Schechner con respecto a la performance. Justamente las críticas de Rozik
aquí tienen que ver con la imposibilidad que el mismo Schechner encuentra para
definir la noción de performance. Alega asimismo que una falacia generalizada reside
en la presunción de que tragedia y teatro nacen al mismo tiempo. Por ello recurre
a las bases de juego, cultura, ritual y teatro de Johan Huizinga y de Roger Caillois,
como una aproximación a las teorías de las raíces, ya que no buscan los orígenes
históricos del teatro, sino aquellos elementos que lo puedan generar.
Finalmente, en la tercera parte del volumen expone las bases de la tesis de las
raíces del teatro: se trata de una facultad mental vital y elemental, una capacidad
innata del cerebro humano de crear espontáneamente imágenes y pensar a través de
ellas. Siguiendo a Ernst Cassirer y a Susanne Langer, afirma que el lenguaje verbal
no es nuestra única forma de simbolización; también lo son las imágenes. Apoyado
en la neurobiología de Stephen Kosslyn, la premisa de Rozik es que las imágenes se
constituyen como unidades de pensamiento. De esa manera, el juego imaginativo
o simbólico es también una forma de pensamiento, tal como lo afirma Jean Piaget.
En esa misma línea, sostiene que los estudios de la representación mítica sirven
igual que el juego, porque el mito es un producto del método imaginístico de pensa-
miento, por el que la psique espontáneamente formula pensamientos en forma de
mundos poéticos. El mito y el teatro tienen entonces sus raíces en el mismo método de
representación: reflejan la creatividad espontánea imaginística de la psique. Y como
el mito requiere de un medio para su comunicación, no es extraño que el teatro se lo
provea. De ahí la fascinación de los teatristas por las fábulas míticas.
Para sustentar su teoría de las raíces, Rozik analiza la boda simbólica en Eleu-
sis, los llamados dramas egipcios, las danzas miméticas prehistóricas, las pinturas
y grabados rupestres en Tassili, el Sahara Central y Europa. Lo que busca no es un
origen, sino revelar las condiciones psicoculturales necesarias para que el medio
teatral pueda llegar a existir.
Como se evidencia, se trata de un libro sólidamente fundamentado, aunque no
por ello menos controversial. Cuestionar los orígenes del teatro occidental en el
ditirambo supone cuestionar 2000 años de teorías teatrales. Asimismo, la apelación
a las neurociencias como impugnación a la psicología para discutir las nociones de
pensamiento, símbolo y lenguaje supone también una controversia en el campo.
Tal vez lo más cuestionable sea su definición de teatro como medio, lo que de-
muestra su deuda con las teorías semiológicas y comunicacionales. Eso lleva a que
diferencias como teatralidad y teatro, por ejemplo, sean pasadas por alto. Pese a esto,
el volumen que aquí reseñamos es de una gran solidez científica, fruto de muchos
SPRING 2017 249
años de trabajo e indispensable para la discusión contemporánea de la teatrología.

El lector podrá estar de acuerdo o no con la tesis de las raíces, pero ciertamente no
puede desconocerla.
María Natacha Koss

Instituto de Artes del Espectáculo, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Taylor, Diana. Performance. Duke UP, 2016: 221 pp.
“How would our disciplines and methodologies change if we took seriously

the idea that bodies (and not only books and documents) produce, store and transfer
knowledge?” (199). This question propels Diana Taylor’s Performance, an inter-
media object-text compiled of images, script phrases, and meditations on the role of
bodies in social and political contexts. “Performance” is a word with varying mean-
ings in English, but no translation in Spanish, French, or Portuguese. This presents
an intriguing problem for scholars like Taylor who collaborate across the culturally
and linguistically diverse Americas, and thus the impetus for a succinct text on the
topic. Adding to Taylor’s robust opus of writing on performance, here she offers a
condensed synthesis of her own recent contributions to performance studies, as well
as those of artists, activists, and scholars. The text is informed by her leadership in
the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, a pioneering think-tank on
performance for the last 19 years. Nine short chapters constitute Performance, mak-
ing it a practical and valuable primer on what bodies can do and have done under
diverse circumstances. Taylor stages an interactive engagement for the reader, even
a performative event in the act of reading, by inserting snapshots of performances
by provocateurs like Split Britches, Regina José Galindo, and 2boys.tv alongside
key academic and activist interventions.
The book’s first half considers histories of performance art, the role of audiences
and technology in performance, and the neoliberal uptake of performance within
corporate spaces to signify evaluation. First, Taylor frames performance through Elin
Diamond’s definition as a thing that one is doing and a thing that is done. She locates
the genesis of performance art in the 60s and 70s with Fluxus, Carolee Schneeman,
and Allen Kaprow’s happenings. At the same time, she troubles this narrative by
acknowledging that indigenous and immigrant communities across the Americas
hold diverse genealogies of performance, such as the legacies of human exhibition
and display. These practices stretch performance art history further back than the
mid-twentieth century, the period in which the field generally narrates its beginnings.
Next, Taylor investigates how audience reception and spectatorship influence perfor-
mance, as actors (including politicians) can shape the terms of engagement between
bodies. She reintroduces the term “percepticide” to describe how the biopolitical aim
of military dictatorships seeks to “render us deaf, dumb and blind.” (75). Readers of
visual culture and theory will value the juxtaposition of analysis and examples, such
as Lorie Novak’s Look/Not/Look, an image of the photographer holding her head
overlaid with images of war and devastation. Connecting Latin American legacies
of authoritarianism with European fascism, Taylor engages key scholars like Brecht
and Artaud, whose influential works on national spectatorship sought to make the
“familiar strange” and thus mobilize a public to question authority. These strategies
give audiences fresh eyes to contest the messages enforced in their social sphere
(81). Culling diverse examples from digital platforms that create a second life for
the circulation and appropriation, such as the images of Abu Ghraib, Taylor uses
her intellectual dexterity to demonstrate how seeing is a way of knowing—both in
content and in the form of the book.
The second half of the text discusses how performance interventions emerge to
interrupt systems of power. Taylor introduces two new concepts: “animatives” and
the argument that performance studies is “postdisciplinary.” Building on Austin’s
“performatives” (linguistic utterances that create action) and Butler’s theory of per-
formativity (reiterative citational acts produced through discourse), Taylor adds the
term “animative,” which she defines as an “inappropriate response to a performative
utterance” (127). She uses the term to capture the act of breathing life into an action,
a space, or a gesture. The Occupy movement’s refusal to leave Zuccotti square, for
example, illustrates the “inappropriate” response to Mayor Bloomberg’s performative
edicts and “official utterances” to vacate. Animatives are “affect in motion,” such as
the energy, behaviors, and events that surround a performative event; they capture that
which is beyond language. Finally, in her conclusion, Taylor argues that the field of
performance studies is “postdisciplinary,” rather than inter- or intra-, because it resists
“definable limits; it is (forever) an ‘emergent’ field” (200). We arrive at the liveness
of the discipline itself: it refuses canonization and the formality of singular methods.
A resource for artists, activists, and scholars alike, Performance invites us to
witness the transformation of bodies across simulation labs, city streets, plazas, and
the stage. Readers of Latin American studies will find Taylor’s plethora of examples
pragmatic when considering how creative responses to authoritarian regimes launch
cultural and political critique. The text seeks to reach many audiences at the same
time, and thus what we gain in the brevity and accessibility of form, we lose in the
depth of engagement with new terms, like animatives, which holds the potential for
productive intersections with affect theory and new materialism. Taylor’s legacy and
impact on the field has profoundly transformed the ways we understand how bodies
are shaped and structured through “colonialism, dictatorships, patriarchies, torture,
capitalism, religions, globalism, and so on” (96). She continues this work in Perfor-
mance, summarizing multiple meanings of the untranslatable word: its capacity to
interrupt systems of power, and at the same time, to re-enforce them. Performance’s
ambivalence, its capacity to harm through stylized authoritarian politics or to liberate
SPRING 2017 251
through creative and inventive interruptions, is part of its power, as it continues to

shape and often make the worlds we (want to) live in.
Lilian G. Mengesha
Brown University
Villa, Mónica. José González Castillo. Militante de lo popular. Corregidor, 2015:

219 pp.
Este libro recupera y evidencia el aporte múltiple de José González Castillo

(1885-1937) como dramaturgo, letrista de tango, guionista de cine, escritor de ra-
dioteatro, defensor de los derechos de los artistas y educador; es decir, su conexión
con el teatro, las artes y la cultura popular del Buenos Aires de los primeros cuarenta
años del siglo XX puesto que “su producción teatral y su participación como hombre
de la cultura de Buenos Aires han sido olvidadas” (13). Para conseguir este objetivo,
Villa analiza los posicionamientos políticos del artista y su relación con la ideología
anarquista. La autora, con razón, asevera que el proyecto creador de González Castillo
fue totalizador, puesto que excedió los límites de la actividad escénica y se diversificó
en numerosos aspectos de la cultura popular. En su obra, además, manifestó una fuerte
denuncia social, defendió a los sectores más desprotegidos y denunció las injusticias
de la época. El texto de Villa contiene apreciaciones bien sustentadas que arrojan luz
sobre determinadas decisiones estéticas, políticas y sociales de González Castillo
que se pueden encontrar en toda su obra independiente del medio que utilizara: “El
hilo conductor presente en toda la obra, literaria o no, fue su indomable espíritu
combativo que lo llevó a abordar todos los géneros populares que tuvo a su alcance
en un intento de modificar las estructuras sociales a las cuales se oponía, usándolos
como vectores de su disconformidad” (173).
El volumen reúne y clasifica cuarenta y siete textos, obras difíciles de encontrar
porque, salvo contadas excepciones, no volvieron a ser editadas, y por no existir una
entidad depositaria de su obra completa. La monografía abarca el periodo creativo de
González Castillo, 1900-1940, y se estructura en una introducción, cinco capítulos
dedicados a la cronología artístico-social del autor, anexos y bibliografía.
González Castillo veía en el sainete un auténtico medio de expresión teatral
que no solo expresaba sus ideales de justicia social sino que también era un género
exitoso que le permitía conectarse con un público masivo. Así, su producción teatral
mayoritariamente saineteril es el objeto de estudio de los primeros tres apartados.
Cada capítulo comienza con una exposición detallada del contexto político, social
y artístico de la época, seguido del análisis de dos obras de cada etapa del teatro
de González Castillo, para compararlas con un texto teatral canónico de acuerdo al
modelo de periodización del teatro argentino desarrollado por Osvaldo Pellettieri.
El primer capítulo analiza El retrato del pibe y Entre bueyes no hay cornadas, com-
parándolos con El debut de la piba de Roberto Cayol, texto canónico del sainete
como pura fiesta. En el capítulo siguiente, Luigi y La serenata se comparan con Los
disfrazados, un sainete tragicómico de Carlos Mauricio Pacheco. El tercer capítulo,
sobre la comedia asainetada (1912-1940), examina Los dientes del perro y Chiri-
moya, que se contrastan con Conservatorio La Armonía de Armando Discépolo. Al
mismo tiempo, se profundiza en la influencia del cabaret y del tango en el sainete.
Una contribución importante de este volumen está en la publicación del discurso
crítico periodístico sobre la obra de González Castillo.
La cuarta parte profundiza en la etapa poética de González Castillo (1921-1930) y
desarrolla la evolución del tango para mostrar el lugar del tipo de tango que González
Castillo escribió. El último capítulo se refiere a la labor educativa del artista, quien
entre los años 1928 y 1937 gestó, ideó y creó la Universidad Popular de Boedo y la
Peña Pacha Camac, instituciones organizadas de acuerdo a orientaciones modernas
de enseñanza y a las necesidades de la gente del barrio. Este apartado incluye también
sus radioteatros, canal expresivo diferente en el que también plasmó su tesis social.
Estos dos últimos capítulos son particularmente valiosos puesto que evidencian el
importante papel que González Castillo tuvo en la música y en la educación. Dos ane-
xos que presentan información desconocida complementan y cierran la monografía.
El primero presenta una lista cronológica de los tangos del artista, con los detalles
de producción realizado por Horacio Loriente, además de las letras de algunos de
ellos. El segundo recupera materiales que se creían perdidos: el segundo cuadro de
la obra La serenata y el sainete Mochuelo.
El libro corresponde a una visión demasiado literaria y muy estructuralista de
entender el teatro, con un análisis retórico un poco forzado. Reproduce además
algunas problemáticas que hoy parecen superadas; por ejemplo, la clasificación del
diálogo como texto principal y de las acotaciones como texto secundario, introducida
por Roman Ingarden a comienzos de los años 70. Ya en los años 90 la semiología
teatral había reivindicado el papel de las acotaciones al reconocerle igual importan-
cia que al diálogo. El esquema escogido para el desarrollo temporal de los capítulos
invita a la repetición y genera confusión, por ejemplo, con repeticiones del mismo
párrafo en páginas diferentes. Estos errores podrían haberse evitado con una mejor
corrección de pruebas.
Con todo, Mónica Villa presenta un estudio valioso y necesario del teatro argen-
tino que rescata la figura de González Castillo, mostrando la evolución de su labor
artística en el campo intelectual nacional.
María Teresa Sanhueza

Wake Forest University

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SPRING 2016

Special issue: Theatre on Screen, Cinema on Stage:

Ceci n’est pas une chaise: The Treachery of the Real

Dancing Affect in the Aftermath of Loss: El loro y el cisne

The Fantasy of the Real in Romina Paula’s Fauna

Matías Piñeiro’s Viola and the Resonant Drift of Love

Autofictions of Postwar: Fostering Empathy in

Archipelago of Memories: Affective Travelogue

COPYRIGHT 2017 BY THE CENTER OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

Escuela de vida: Una conversación con Martín Rejtman y

Afterword: The Transmedial and the Communitarian

“Esa era la idea: que después, como una receta, quedara

Entrevista a Mario Cantú Toscano

American Theatre on a Latin Beat: Interviewing Pregones

Otra pérdida para el Teatro Nacional de Chile: Egon Wolff

Miriam Colón: Puerto Rican Icon and Theatrical Traveler

Book Reviews......................................................................................... 239

Preface: The Spaces Between

It is impossible to consider Argentine theatre without folding in some

offers a way of considering, through the narrative of four filmmakers working

continues to function as a way of seeing, a mode of questioning, a discourse

Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London

Coloquio Internacional “Realidades y alusiones del texto teatral.

Universidad Masaryk, Brno (República Checa), 5 - 7 de octubre de 2017

El Departamento de Lenguas y Literaturas Románicas de la Facultad de

Jordana Blejmar and Cecilia Sosa

This special issue is the result of a series of screenings titled Meeting

Beyond New Argentine Cinema and Biodrama

Kirchnerism and Aesthetic Autonomy

A New Hybrid Genre

passive forms of spectatorship, this body of work stimulates its audience on

From Buenos Aires to the Global World

mission: from Piñeiro’s reversions and re-inventions of Shakespeare in Bue-

A Novel Subjectivity and a Feeling of Community

involvement with them, an engagement that produces a love story and an

Andermann, Jens. New Argentine Cinema. I.B. Tauris, 2011.

La Asociación Mexicana de Investigación Teatral, el Centro Nacional de

Las fronteras en el teatro: condición, contextos e intersecciones

En esta ocasión pensamos en torno al fenómeno teatral y dramatúrgico a partir

“So the beginning is an impossible place, as meaningless

“…la nube Magritte estaba exactamente suspendida sobre

Introduction: Screen Realities

form, as other, more popular forms of entertainment encroach, echoes a

of December 2001.7 Tellas clearly positions her concept in resistance to the

This Is Not a Chair: A Reading of Cineastas

Photo: Bea Bogers

to Pensotti’s richly intertextual and intermedial performance. For, the be-

Affective Cartographies of the Cinematic Self

Being Through Cinema

Photo: Bea Bogers

furnishings (unnecessary ‘distancing’ of the audiences’ emotions,

To Conclude: Identity as Intermedial?

nature of the expression adds to the flippancy.36 Instead of the nostalgic

tado” (qtd. in Fermosel). Cineastas offers a contemporary variation on the

Newcastle University, United Kingdom

Alice in the Cities. Directed by Wim Wenders. 1974.

Grimson, Alejandro, editor La cultura en las crisis latinoamericanas. CLASCO, 2004.

Tanning, Dorothea. Birthday. Lapis Press, 1986.

Dancing Affect in the Aftermath of Loss: El loro y el cisne and

Alejo Moguillansky’s third film, El loro y el cisne (2013), mischievous-

Act 1: Meeting the Director

tina’s last dictatorship, has mostly avoided making political statements or

Act 2: Mocking the Transnational