Griselda Gambaro and Beyond: A “Dermography” of Contemporary Women’s Theater and Performance

doi:10.1017/9781009283069.034

Chapter 33 - Griselda Gambaro and Beyond: A “Dermography” of Contemporary Women’s Theater and Performance

from Part III - Literary Names

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2024

Philippa Page ,

Cecilia Sosa and

Brenda Werth

Edited by

Alejandra Laera and

Mónica Szurmuk

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Alejandra Laera: Affiliation:
University of Buenos Aires
Mónica Szurmuk: Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional de San Martín /National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina

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Summary

This chapter looks at politically defiant women’s theatre and performance in Argentina from the 1960s onward though the concept of the skin. It pays special attention to the varying ways in which women in theater and performance have engaged with the ever-pressing and pervasive issues of gender-based violence, power, the body, family, memory, and resistance. Drawing upon Griselda Gambaro’s visionary Información para extranjeros (1971/1987), we suggest multidirectional dialogues with the process of state-led terror and forced disappearance perpetrated during the 1976–83 military dictatorship. While discussing varying traditions of contestation and rebellion across feminist theater and performance, we build this dermography of contemporary women’s theatre and performance in which Piel de Lava (Skin of Lava) is not only the name of a group but the symbol of a new form of politically committed, “post-traumatic” feminist performance. In those terms, the chapter discusses some of the most audacious and innovative recent feminist pieces, including Lola Arias’ installations suggesting implicated forms of spectatorship, Romina Paula’s singular approach to motherhood through desiring mothers and dissident daughters, as well as the alternative forms of staging gender disobedience proposed by Albertina Carri and Analía Couceyro in their rereading of Tadeys (2019).

Keywords

Griselda Gambaro theater performance skin feminism

Type: Chapter
Information: A History of Argentine Literature , pp. 520 - 535

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009283069.034 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2024

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