Politics and Violence in Spanish American Theater

This course will concentrate on the Spanish American theatre of the second half of the 20th-century, focusing on two of its most controversial and debatable aspects: the role of politics in theatrical discourse and the repercussions of the theatrical representation of violence against people in their societies. We will examine how violence is often represented in this theater as a grotesque game in which spectators are invited to participate either as victimizers or as victims. (1 unit)

Required Text: 9 dramaturgos hispanoamericanos: Antología de teatro hispanoamericano del siglo XX: Tomo I (La noche de los asesinos), eds. Frank Dauster, Leon Lyday, & George Woodyard (Ottawa: Girol Books, 2nd ed., 1983 or most recent). ISBN 0-919659-37-3; Luis Rafael Sánchez, La pasión según Antígona Pérez 16th ed. (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editiorial Cultural, 2000 (or most recent) ISBN 84-399-3092-5).

These plays and other critical readings will be provided in electronic form at Middlebury: Enrique Buenaventura, La maestra y La tortura; Griselda Gambaro, Información para extranjeros (Argentina, 1973); Eduardo Pavlovsky, El Señor Galíndez; Mariela Romero, El juego (Venezuela, 1976); Susana Torres Molina, Extraño juguete (Argentina,1977); Hugo Salcedo, El viaje de los cantores (Mexico, 1988); Marco Antonio de la Parra, La secreta obscenidad de cada día (Chile, 1988): Eduardo Rovner, Cuarteto (Argentina, 1991).