Games and Play in the Theater of Spanish American Women (review)

194 LATINAMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW Armando Morales sigue un recorrido por esas huellas en el teatro de títeres y Pedro Morales acude a fuentes teóricas como Eugenio Barba y Patrice Pavis para proponer una aproximación conceptual de la ritualidad teatral y la teatralidad ritual. Más personalizados son los acercamientos de Brugal y González, los que establecen un nexo entre la posesión y los mecanismos técnicos que el actor utiliza para llegar a representar un personaje en un teatro ritual. Rivero cierra esta segunda sección dedicando su trabajo a la presencia de esta temática en la cinematografía cubana. Un compendio útil, variado y abarcador de las manifestaciones artísticas en el siglo XX, Rito y representación resulta una entrega de referencia obligada en los estudios de estos temas. Ileana Azor Universidad de las Américas, Puebla Larson, Catherine. Games and Play in the Theater of Spanish American Women. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2004: 216 p. Catherine Larson’s study of games in contemporary Spanish American women’s theatre highlights connections among performance, social commentary and play. Larson offers a broad survey of the theoretical work on games and play, noting the points of contact between theatre and anthropology. She describes games as both a structural and a thematic element of the dramas studied and argues that much of the upheaval, violence and repression of the twentieth century finds its theatrical expression in the metaphors of games and play employed by playwrights such as Griselda Gambaro, SusanaTorres Molina, MaritzaWilde, Rosario Castellanos and Myrna Casas. The use of the game metaphor, Larson suggests, may reflect both an appropriation of dominant cultural structures and an attempt to reconfigure existing social relations and aesthetic codes toward transformative ends. Larson analyzes some 17 plays, selected to illustrate a wide range of theatre . She employs the concept of game quite broadly, using the term to encompass both overt and metaphorical games, among them children’s games (most often played– frequently grotesquely distorted–by adult actors in the plays under discussion), contests, role-playing, and the often humorous ludic spirit that pervades certain scripts. The games Larson studies serve a variety of functions, including the establishment of individual identity, the expression of ritualized violence and the examination of the relationship between power and gender. Larson describes metaphorical games that, as she explains, highlight the effects of acting “as if,” an activity that foregrounds both social and aesthetic masks, those masks forcibly imposed as well as those more freely chosen. Play appears in many of the texts as a means of social control. Games also underscore the self-reflexive nature of the theatre. Examples of FALL2005 195 the games Larson treats include the intertextual and representational games of Elena Garro’s La dama boba, the extremely violent children’s games of Roma Mahieu’s Juegos a la hora de la siesta, and the games that Sabina Berman plays with the audience of Krisis, as she drops clues and challenges expectations. Larson emphasizes the constant references, in many plays, to the rules of the game, to playing fair or playing dirty, to a sense that social interaction is governed by rules – rules unevenly enforced or disseminated, rules which some of the players may never fully understand. Larson persuasively argues that the prevalence of both explicit and metaphorical game playing in contemporary Spanish American women’s theatre is neither accidental nor insignificant. Yet although she offers an insightful analysis of the gender issues at play in many of the texts, the argument that female playwrights’ use of the game is different from that of their male counterparts could be more fully developed. Some of the English translations of quoted passages are awkward. Several playwrights are treated in more than one chapter, and the effect is rather choppy. Yet Larson’s readings are clear and perceptive, and she offers a valuable, systematic approach to a significant aspect of the contemporary theatre, one that suggests promising avenues for further study and sheds new light on important plays. Amalia Gladhart University of Oregon Partida Tayzan, Armando. Modelos de acción dramática aristotélicos y no aristotélicos. México, D.F.: Editorial Itaca / UNAM...