Las razones del caos: Antología del teatro del absurdo y la vanguardia hispanoamericanos (review)

SPRING 2008 175 del siglo XXI. Y más aún, espero que en su mayor difusión y conocimiento algo aprendamos de ellas que nos ayude a descolonizar el teatro en México. El trabajo de Donald Frischmann y Carlos Montemayor, en este tercer volumen y, en general, todo el trabajo de realización de esta vasta antología de literatura indígena mexicana contemporánea es una gran labor. Frischmann muestra las pautas de su conocimiento sobre algunas manifestaciones de teatro indígena actual, en particular en su mayoría de la dramaturgia de las regiones mayas del territorio mexicano. Después de este volumen sobre el teatro maya, se espera ver en el futuro cercano algún estudio sobre el teatro de las etnias de Guerrero y Oaxaca hasta llegar a los grupos del norte, como Pápagos, Mayos, Tepehuanes. Pero eso no nos quita el gusto de felicitar a los creadores de estas magníficas obras de reflexión y divulgación de la palabra indígena: Donald Frichmann y Carlos Montemayor. Alejandro Ortiz Bullé Goyri Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco Quackenbush, L. Howard. Las razones del caos: Antología del teatro del absurdo y la vanguardia hispanoamericanos. Tlaxcala, México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala/ Brigham Young University, 2007: 417 p. The difficulty in identifying particular works of SpanishAmerican theater as being vanguardist or absurdist is that one must use terminology based on European theater operating within social, cultural and political environments very distinct from those of SpanishAmerica. Nonetheless, there exist uniquely SpanishAmerican vanguardist and absurdist forms, both influenced by yet divergent from their European predecessors. In the annotated anthology Las razones del caos: Antología del teatro del absurdo y la vanguardia hispanoamericanos, Howard Quackenbush traces vanguardist and absurdist movements through plays from Spanish America illustrating how European theatrical modalities have been utilized, incorporated and renovated in order to create works that address the social and political realities of the Americas. Las razones del caos features twelve plays published from 1950 until 1995 that are representative of the extensive production of Spanish American dramatic texts that incorporate absurdist and vanguardist modalities. While maintaining a broad chronological and thematic scope, the selected plays are organized under two overarching classifications: forms of the SpanishAmerican vanguard, which contain absurdist elements and works that Quackenbush considers demonstrative of the Spanish American Theater of the Absurd. Preceding each section, an introduction places the subsequent plays within their cultural and political contexts. Furthermore, each primary selection includes a brief biography and bibliography of the playwright. Additionally, insightful stylistic/structural commentaries, particularly useful to those 176 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW with a limited background in vanguardist and absurdist theater, follow each play. The anthology begins with an introduction to SpanishAmerican vanguardist theater, outlining the influence of its precursors in post-World War I German Expressionism, the Soviet Avant-Garde, Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty, and the early Spanish American vanguards. Following this introduction is the section entitled “Formas de vanguardia con reminiscencias absurdas,” which includes Emilio Carballido’s La zona intermedia: auto sacramental, Elena Garro’s Un hogar sólido, Haffe Serulle’s El gran carnaval, and Virgilio Piñera’s Dos viejos pánicos. These four works exhibit linguistic incoherency and challenge the spectator to actively participate in the production of meaning. Quackenbush justifies the inclusion of these works by stating that “desde la perspectiva verbal, las obras de vanguardia establecen un puente lingüístico-conceptual entre las influencias artísticas del ‘avant-garde’con las formas del Teatro del Absurdo” (145). Interestingly, while many of the works classified as vanguardist are staged prior to those which are grouped as Spanish American Theater of the Absurd, Quackenbush emphasizes that vanguardist theater is still being written and staged today. After the section on the SpanishAmerican vanguards, there is an introduction to the SpanishAmerican Theater of theAbsurd, which follows its development from European Modernist and Expressionist roots through to its continued appearance today. After establishing this historical context, Quackenbush outlines how the structure and tonalities of absurdist theater differ from those of traditional Western theater. The first two plays in this section, Carlos Maggi’s Esperando a Rodó and Iván Garc...