Exorcising History: Argentine Theater under Dictatorship by Jean Graham-Jones (review)

Reviews 255 many previously untranslated remarks by Mnouchkine, LeMetre, mask-maker Erhard Stiefel, Cixous, the actors, and others directly and indirectly involved in the productions traces the intriguing profile of a unique troupe that, in a labor of love, places the necessity and redemptive power of Theatre above question. JEAN GRAHAM-JONES. Exorcising History: Argentine Theater under Dictators !zip. London: Associated University Presses, 2000. Pp. 259. $44.50 (Hb). Reviewed by Diana Taylor, New York University Jean Graham-Jones's Exorcising History: Argentine Theater under Dictatorship provides a careful, well-documented overview of theatrical production in Argentina during and immediately following the "Dirty War" (1976-1983). During a particularly virulent period, Graham-Jones attests, Argentinians still produced and attended theatre. The numbers tell the story: in 1979, at the height of the military brutality against its own popUlation, 2,200,000 people went to plays and 278 plays were written. Dramatists and critics agree that theatre served a special role during the "Dirty War." The physical act of bringing an audience together defied the dictatorship's prohibition against gatherings . The plays offered the public a "reality" check, ironically reflecting the brutal truth of everyday violence in a society predicated on fabrications and make-believe. Even though the plays were censored and sometimes suspended , the censors faced the next-to-impossible job of policing every performance of every show. A gesture or an inflection could say what the censored words themselves could not, and audience members became highly sophisticated readers of double-coded cultural acts of resistance. Censors may control texts, but how do they control the living bodies of performance? Exorcising History is divided into four chapters organized along chronological lines. The first, " 1976-1979: Theatre 'Metaphorizes' Reality," offers an overview of some of the plays of the period, with particular attention to Ricardo Monti's Visita and Roberto Mario Cossa's La nona and No hay que lIorar. [n the face of censorship, Graham-Jones argues, playwrights turn to rnetaphor as a means of expressing the unsayable. A grotesque reality requires obJique forms of representation in periods of such extreme political violence. Chapter two, " 1980-1982: Myths Unmasked, Unrealities Exposed," again begins with an overview, next looks at machismo through the analysis of Ricardo Halac's Un trabaja fabuloso and Susana Torres Molina's ... y a otm coso mariposa, and then goes on to explore other plays having to do with "national identity" (69). Chapter three, "Vigilant, Vigilante Theatre: Tealro Abierto (198 1-t985)," focuses, as the title suggests, on the various offerings of Teatro Abierto between 1981 and t985, just as the military dictatorship REVIEWS began to lose its hold and, later, its power. Graham-lones follows the same structural outline, first providing an overview and then getting down to the analysis of specific plays - here, Mauricio Kartun's La Casita de los viejos and Cumbia Morena Cumbia, Mda Bortnik's Papa querido and De a IIno, and plays by Cossa and Eugenio Griffero. The final chapter, " [983-85: Settling Accounts," looks at the immediate post-dictatorship context and the theatre produced under the hopes of "redemocratization," including works by Griselda Gambaro, Cossa, Jorge Goldenberg, and Eduardo Pavlovsky. The change in the sociopolitical context has clearly made itself felt both on the subject matter and on the aesthetic framing chosen by playwrights. As Graham -lones writes, "The tragic structure of the [976 written text was exploded by the [985 theatrical text, with the addition of distancing, fragmenting, and self-parodying techniques that would become basic elements of Buenos Aires post-Proceso theater" ([55). Exorcising History ends with a conclusion and two useful appendices, the first listing the works staged during the period in question, the second listing major political events. While Exorcising History is a complete and helpful overview, it reads like an early work to me. I have always admired lean Graham-Jones's grasp of her subject and the detail-oriented nature of her work, but in this book she seems reluctant to engage in the theoretical issues and debates that seem central to her project. How, for example, can one dream of "exorcising" history? How does this understanding of history - as a violent event/wound...