On the Visibility of Latin American Theatre

In the spring of 1982, the Latin American Theatre Review held the first of four Latin American Theatre Today symposia and festivals, which brought scholars and theatre practitioners from the United States, Latin America, and Europe to the campus of the University of Kansas. I was privileged to have helped organize that memorable event, and was asked to introduce one of the distinguished guest speakers, Professor Juan José Arrom of Yale University. A pioneer in our field and an expert in early and colonial Latin American theatre, Professor Arrom was also the mentor of another notable scholar in attendance, Frank Dauster of Rutgers University. In my introduction, I spoke of three generations of Latin American theatre experts: Arrom, Dauster, and the symposium's host, George Woodyard. I referred to myself as a younger scholar, with the graduate students who were there as following in the footsteps of my generation. We were a relatively small group back then, studying a field that was peripheral in Hispanic studies—where poetry and prose have dominated and only the theatre of Spain's Golden Age has been proffered an honored place. Thirty-two years later, the generational configuration has shifted, and our pioneers have retired or are on the cusp of doing so. I am, alas, now among the elders, mentoring a younger rank and file that has expanded and made its presence felt in exciting and innovative ways. Back in 1982, no one would have asked me to comment on the state of Latin American theatre and performance studies, as the latter was not even on our research radar. If I evoke the memory of 1982, it is to stress that our field has developed considerably in three decades, and that, from a handful of distinguished names, its roster is now filled with so many that one cannot isolate a few for recognition. And like any other discipline, ours can only go in the directions where its researchers take it. I would like to briefly share some of my observations about where Latin American theatre studies have come from, where they are now, and where they might be headed.

In its early days as an academic field in the United States, Latin American theatre studies were relatively easy to define, with textual analyses taking the lead (that is, when texts were available, as theatre was and continues to be the least published of genres in Latin America). Theatre and drama were terms used almost interchangeably, and Latin America was conceived of as a specific geographical area, with Spanish and Portuguese as the two legitimate languages for the theatre. Today much has changed, and a perusal of the two leading journals in the field (Latin American Theatre Review and Gestos) shows that, like the study of drama and theatre in general, new theories—beginning with semiotics and up to the many posts—have changed the parameters of study significantly over the years. Or better said, fields, because it simply is no longer possible to speak of a single, homogeneous area of study. The distinction between drama and theatre has become more pressing, given the emphasis that Latin American theatre practitioners themselves have given to performance over the written text. Not only this, but the adjective "Latin American" is itself now questionable, as old geographic boundaries have been blurred with the diasporas of Latin Americans all over the world, but especially in the United States. Among them are playwrights, performers, and theatre artists who have continued their work here, sometimes in their native language and other times in English. Language, therefore, is not the identifying signifier that it once was. In the Latin American countries themselves, theatre in such indigenous languages as Mayan and Quechua has begun to demand its place within the multiple canons of national theatres. Indeed, the very notion of multiple canons—as opposed to a single one based on the standards of so-called legitimate (and, in class-based Latin America, elitist) theatre—has further opened up the discipline.

Still, I have wondered on occasion to what degree we have created the fields of Latin American theatre according...