Exorcising History: Argentine Theater Under Dictatorship (review)

Exorcising History: Argentine Theater Under Dictatorship. By Jean Graham-Jones. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 2000; pp. 259. $44.50.

One year after the US ended its presence in Vietnam in 1975, Argentina became the last of the southern cone nations to fall victim to repressive controls instigated by a military junta. From 1976 to 1985 the nation's leaders staged a "Dirty War" against their own people in an effort to impose political stability and improve economic conditions. Against a background of disappearances, censorship, and terror, Argentine dramatists struggled to respond to those dark years with plays that would speak about their nation's experience. In Exorcising History Jean Graham-Jones traces the evolving nature of the plays performed in the capital of Buenos Aires during the "Dirty War." Her study highlights those dramatists who employed countercensorship, that is, techniques designed to couch the play's messages while at the same time communicating an active and resisting stance.

The four main chapters are arranged in chronological order, and each presents a historical overview, a general discussion of the theatre environment at that particular moment, and an analysis of several exemplary plays, focusing on details of how the plays were staged and how the critics and public reacted. Chapter one argues that the plays from 1976 to 1979 utilized the metaphor of the family as a microcosm of society, in which marital problems, generational differences, and sibling rivalry made reference to the state and its repressive violence as well as to society's antiquated values. Chapter two discusses plays that began the process of critical self-distancing by addressing the national myth of the macho porteño (hyper-masculine native of Buenos Aires) during the years 1980 to 1982. Chapter three examines the trajectory of the Teatro Abierto, an oppositional theater movement that attempted to operate in democratically creative terms between 1981 and 1985. Chapter four gauges the aftermath of the dictatorship, from the national elections in 1983 to 1985. Here Graham-Jones discusses the change in the plays' focus regarding the relation between individual and society and their attempts to settle questions of responsibility, accountability, and co-optation.

The introduction proposes that while the "Dirty War" was an extreme example of violence and repression, it was by no means an anomaly in Argentina's history. The country's artistic production has, according to Graham-Jones, responded to and been influenced by a tradition of militarism and authoritarianism. She returns to this point in her conclusion, which treats the problem of the post-dictatorship's heterogeneous theatrical world slowly moving to refashion itself without an obvious enemy to counter--a situation shared by the theatre of many other Latin American nations attempting to shake off their turbulent pasts during the 1980s. Yet Graham-Jones does not risk a definition for these last ten or more years, stating simply that Argentine theater "does not know what nor how to dramatize . . . [It is] a theater that finds itself in a state of crisis both thematic and aesthetic" (161).

Graham-Jones not only brings together plays and scholarly resources that are difficult to find and only available in Spanish, she also provides two useful appendices. One lists Argentine plays, foreign plays, restagings, and one-person shows and revues for the years 1976 to 1985; the other offers a chronology of significant historical and political events in Argentina from 1966 to 1987. All citations taken from the plays or critical articles include the author's translation to English, making the book useful to those outside of the area of Latin American theatre. However, the analyses of the plays and the carefully noted commentary from critics and reviewers in Argentina are useful to specialists. Argentina, Chile, and Brazil constitute the three most visible locations in Latin America where the theatre responded heartily to confining, even threatening, modes of control. Graham-Jones contributes to a growing body of works in English about theatre during Latin America's dictatorships that includes Severino...