Staging Words presents new perspectives on Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela and their theater, by postulating that nation can be imagined and reconstructed through the deliberate performance of intertexts. The book shows how past artistic texts - other plays, stories, newspaper articles, songs, or paintings - can be manipulated and translated to create a new theatrical script, and that this new script can expose an innovative space for interpreting the nation. The introduction reviews theories of intertextuality, nation, and nationalism and applies them to Latin America. Each chapter studies two to three plays and shows how the intertexts open up hidden connections and border spaces within texts and between texts that the new writer and reader fill with significance, replacing the meaning of the pretext with their own. This new textual voice permits texts to be restaged, reconfigured, and imagined in a way that is purely Latin American.

Fluid Bodies traces the intersections of global movement with transgender and queer identities from authors and artists of the Hispanic Caribbean. Utilizing the theme of fluidity and travel, Fluid Bodies analyzes novels, graphic novels, theatre, and performance art. These works demonstrate how transgender and queer bodies redefine belonging, particularly national belonging, through global movement and community making practices. Through these genres, the text follows the movement of transgender and queer identities from textual spaces to spaces of the body. The gradual movement from text to body—as it occurs in these genres—demonstrates the variety of representational strategies that dismantle binary readings of gender, sexuality, and nationality. Transgender visibility is a pressing social issue, and today’s transgender moment will be a social and political necessity for years to come. Of particular importance are representations of transgender and/or queer people of color. The field of transgender representation is growing, and Fluid Bodies adds to the visibility of transgender and queer identity from the Hispanic Caribbean. By investigating the relationship between novels, graphic novels, theatre, and performance art, Fluid Bodies emphasizes how each work plays on and against the separation of language and the body, and how Hispanic Caribbean authors and artists represent transgender and queer identity in order to redefine cultural and national belonging in various geographic spaces.

The collection of essays Worlds in Words: Storytelling in Contemporary Theatre takes up the currently widely debated issue of the revival of various techniques of storytelling in contemporary theatre practice and playwriting. This topic is set in a larger context of the crisis of traditional theatrical and dramatic representation in the 20th century and sets the discussion of new storytelling techniques within the framework of cultural and post-colonial studies, as well as the recent theories of performativity. These new performative modes of theatre practice in the recent decades have exerted a strong impact on the mainstream staging techniques as well as on the form and use of texts written for the theatre today. By focusing on the basic relationship between the text, the stage and the audience, the papers collected in this volume trace these fundamental changes taking place nowadays, which testify to the major shifts in the understanding of the very concept of theatre, its place among other arts and media, as well as in culture, especially in the marginalized cultures and diasporas. The authors of the papers collected here undertake a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of storytelling and adopt an interdisciplinary approach which will makes it possible to give account of the diverse cultural and socio-political grounding of the contemporary theatrical and dramatic techniques.

"This book defines and exemplifies a major genre of modern dramatic writing, termed historiographic metatheatre, in which self-reflexive engagements with the traditions and forms of dramatic art illuminate historical themes and aid in the representation of historical events and, in doing so, formulates a genre. Historiographic metatheatre has been, and remains, a seminal mode of political engagement and ideological critique in the contemporary dramatic canon. Locating its key texts within the traditions of historical drama, self-reflexivity in European theatre, debates in the politics and aesthetics of postmodernism, and currents in contemporary historiography, this book provides a new critical idiom for discussing the major works of the genre and others that utilize its techniques. Feldman studies landmarks in the theatre history of postwar Britain by Weiss, Stoppard, Brenton, Wertenbaker and others, focusing on European revolutionary politics, the historiography of the World Wars and the effects of British colonialism. The playwrights under consideration all use the device of the play-within-the-play to explore constructions of nationhood and of Britishness, in particular. Those plays performed within the framing works are produced in places of exile where, Feldman argues, the marginalized negotiate the terms of national identity through performance."--Publisher's website.

Feeling the Gaze explores the visual elements in eight contemporary Argentine and Chilean theater performances. Gail A. Bulman shows how staged images can awaken spectators' emotions to activate their intellect, provoking nuanced and deep contemplation of social, historical, and political themes. Ranging from simple props, costumes, body movements and spatial constructions to integrated media and digital images, the aesthetic components in these pieces engage to forge multifaceted storytelling, stimulate the public's relation to memory, and create affective bonds that help build individual and collective social consciousness. Recent innovations in Southern Cone theatre aesthetics have been shifting traditional performance/spectator relationships and animating ideological discussions. The various works presented here give readers a holistic understanding of the emerging prominence of visuality and affect as a vehicle for political advocacy in Latin American theatre and performance. The book asks us to consider the formation of new spectator-performance bonds as authors, directors, and theatre groups increasingly turn toward alternative settings for their work. Lingering visual memories of the performances, together with the feelings that the performative experience stirs up, provide spectators with an enduring focal point through which to reflect on and judge what is "beyond" the performed scenes. Staged live in the Southern Cone and internationally since 2014, these plays demonstrate the transgressive power of the visual to make spectators see, feel, and potentially act against injustices and violence. This study offers comprehensive critical discussions of Teatro Banda's O'Higgins: un hombre en pedazos; Teatro Nino Proletario's Fulgor; Mario, Luiggi y sus fantasmas's Manual de carrona; Agustin Leon Pruzzo's En la sombra de la cupula; Teatro la Maria's Los millonarios; Claudio Tolcachir's Proximo; Sergio Blanco's Tebas Land; and Lola Arias's Doble de Riesgo.

Since Argentina's transition to democracy, the expression of human fragility on the stage has taken diverse forms. This book examines the intervention of theatre and performance in the memory politics surrounding Argentina's return to democracy and makes a case for performance's transformative power.

This collection offer a series of new essays authored by leading scholars of Latin American and U.S. Latino theater as well as the performance script Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator, written by Guillermo Gomez-Pena. The fourteen essays focus on contemporary Latin American and U.S. Latino plays and performances and challenge the meanings of genre, gender, race, cultural identity, and performance itself in the context of globalization and shifting borders. The concept of trans/acting, a term that connotes negotiation and/or exchange, provides the framework for essays that include such topics as tansculturation, transnationalism, transgender, transgenre, translation, and adaptation. These individual studies of contemporary theater and performance arts are complimented by trans/actor Gomez-Pena's Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator, a striking transgressive script that underscores the performance nature of territorial and symbolic border crossings. Jacqueline Bixler is Alumni Distinguished Professor of Spanish at Virginia Tech. Laurietz Seda is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Connecticut-Storrs.

A History of Latinx Performing Arts in the U.S. provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the Latinx performing arts in what is now the U.S. since the sixteenth century. This book combines theories and philosophical thought developed in a wide spectrum of disciplines—such as anthropology, sociology, gender studies, feminism, and linguistics, among others—and productions’ reviews, historical context, and political implications. Split into two volumes, these books offer interpretations and representations of a wide range of Latinxs’ lived experiences in the U.S. Volume I provides a chronological overview of the evolution of the Latinx community within the U.S., spanning from the 1500s to today, with an emphasis on the Chicano artistic renaissance initiated by Luis Valdez and the Teatro Campesino in the 1960s. Volume II continues, looking more in depth at the experiences of Latinx individuals on theatre and performance, including Miguel Piñero, Lin-Manuel Miranda, María Irene Fornés, Nilo Cruz, and John Leguizamo, as well as the important role of transnational migration in Latinx communities and identities across the U.S. A History of Latinx Performing Arts in the U.S. offers an accessible and comprehensive understanding of the field and is ideal for students, researchers, and instructors of theatre studies with an interest in the diverse and complex history of Latinx theatre and performance.

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Transnational Literature: The Basics provides an indispensable overview of this important new field of study and the literature it explores. It concisely describes the various ways in which literature can be understood as being "transnational," explains why scholars in literary studies have become so interested in the topic, and discusses the economic, political, social, and cultural forces that have shaped its development. The book explores a range of contemporary critical approaches to the subject, highlighting how topics like globalization, cosmopolitanism, diaspora, history, identity, migration, and decolonization are treated by both scholars in the field and the writers they study. The literary works discussed range across the globe and include fiction, poetry, and drama by writers including Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jenny Erpenbeck, Aleksandar Hemon, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Derek Walcott, Louise Bennett, Xiaolu Guo, Sally Wen Mao, Wole Soyinka, and many more. This survey stresses the range and breadth—but also the intersecting interests—of transnational writing, engaging the variety of subjects it covers and emphasizing the range of literary devices (linguistic, formal, narrative, poetic, and dramatic) it employs. Highlighting the subjects and issues that have become central to fiction in the age of globalization, Transnational Literature: The Basics is an essential read for anyone approaching study of this vibrant area.