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Argentine New Theatre: The Coming of Age of Popular Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir
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Extract

In order to assess Argentine New Theatre and traditional popular drama as comprising a phenomenon of convergence and continuity, one needs first to examine both forms in their relationship to hegemonic culture. Culture is viewed here not in monolithic terms, but rather as defined by its organic ties to a specific socio-political context. Consequently, the central question to be addressed is the way those ties become explicit in the artistic products themselves and, most importantly, in their functionality within the social sector they are inserted in. That functionality defines the ideological line between popular and mass culture, and determines the dynamic links between the New Theatre and traditional dramatic forms, in spite of obvious differences in discourse.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , Summer 1989 , pp. 165 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1989

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References

Notes

1. The bibliography on the subject of popular and mass culture is extensive. Useful critical approaches are particularly provided by Raymond Williams, Armand Mattelard, Antonio Gramsci and Umberto Ecco, among others. For specific studies of Latin American culture refer to Nestor Canclini, Garcia, Las culturas populares en el capitalismo (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1981)Google Scholar, Colombres, Alfredo, La cultura popular (Mexico: Premia, 1984)Google Scholar, and to Materiales para la comunicacion popular (Lima: Centre de Estudios Sobre Cultura Transnacional, 1984).Google Scholar

2. Gaucho: horseman of the Argentine Pampas. Of mestizo origin and semi-nomadic habits, he worked periodically as a hired-hand for the large ranches. Wise, fiercely independent and courageous, the gaucho has become the longest standing myth in Argentine culture.

3. The sainete goes back to the Renaissance Spanish tradition of short popular plays later brought to the American colonies where it was adopted and transformed by local playwrights, most notably in Argentina. The word criollo applies to a person of Spanish descent born in America. Sainele criollo is then the formula conventionally used to refer to the American version of the Spanish theatre form.

4. A theatre form closely connected with the sainele criollo. Somewhat influenced by the playwrights of the Italian Teatro Grottesco (Luigi Chiarelli, Luigi Antonelli, Rosso di San Secondo, Enrico Cavacchiolo and Luigi Pirandello), the grotesco criollo's main authors (Alberto Novión, Deffilipis Novoa and, most notably, Armando Discépolo) all come from the sainte criollo school. For further information refer to Kaiser-Lenoir, Claudia, El grotesco criollo: estilo teatral de una época (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1977).Google Scholar

5. Sec n. 3.

6. This was the case particularly in plays focusing on more ‘universal’ themes.

7. Integrational and oppositional are categories used by George Szanto in reference to the relationship of conformity or dissent exhibited by theatre vis-à-vis the values of the system. Theatre and Propaganda (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978).Google Scholar

8. Like Juan Moreira, Solané was inspired by a real-life gaucho persecuted by the authorities and loved and supported by the people.

9. A beverage made from the mate leaf and sipped with a silver straw from small dried gourd, ‘mate’ is the Argentine national drink.

10. By the 1880s England had control over virtually all of the country's natural and technological resources, from the entire railway system to the drinking water. To this must be added the calamitous economic repercussions of a policy of new loans to cover the ever-growing debt to English banks: from 86 million gold pesos in 1880, the debt had soared to 355 million by 1890. A situation exactly like the one Argentina faces today (the bondage remains; only creditors change). For further information refer to Brailovsky, Antonio, Historia de las crisis argentinas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Belgrano, 1982).Google Scholar

11. Sudamérica (Buenos Aires), 19 12 1890. (No page numbers.)Google Scholar

12. The national project of industrial development drawn up by the liberal oligarchy in power around 1853 called for the promotion of massive immigration to supplement a small local work force. Between 1856 and 1914 seven million immigrants joined a native population of a little over a million. 75% of the newcomers remained in Buenos Aires, and a very small number experienced any kind of upward social mobility. For more information refer to Germani, Gino, Política y sociedad en una época de transición (Buenos Aires: Editorial Pailos, 1971)Google Scholar, and Fillol, Tomas, Social Factors in Economic Development: the Argentine Case (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1966).Google Scholar

13. Developed by a clever Spanish entrepreneur in 1868, the system of back to back performances allowed for up to ten shows a day.

14. Posadas, Abel, Introduction to El Teatro argentino, Vol. 6 (Buenos Aires: Centre Editor de America Latina, 1980), p. 1.Google Scholar

15. Brailovsky, Antonio, p. 59.Google Scholar

16. Namely what became known as the ‘tragic week’ of 1919 in which thousands of steel workers were massacred, and the Residency Law and the ‘gag law’ of 1919 promulgated to end immigrants' activism in the Unions.

17. The first grotesco criollo to be staged was Mateo (1921)Google Scholar by Armando Discépolo.

18. To mention some notorious examples: Armando Discépolo, author of the most popular grotescos criollos later became director of the El Mundo station's radio drama company. Olinda Bozán, a famous actress in the first half of the century, started her career in the circus, subsequently moving to radio drama and finally to film.

19. El Teatro bárbaro del interior and Los artistas trashumantes (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Pluma, 1985).Google Scholar

20. Region made up by three Midwestern provinces: San Luis, Mendoza and San Juan. Periodic research was carried out through the area between 1984 and 1987.

21. In December 1983, as a result of backlash from the Malvinas's war defeat, mounting internal pressure, and economic chaos, the military dictatorship was forced to allow free elections and a return to constitutional democracy.

22. In 1981 hundreds of theatre workers rallied around a project designed to rescue theatre (and public opinion) from the silence imposed by military terror. 21 playwrights, 21 directors and more than 200 actors worked (without salaries) in the first cycle of one-act plays. Neither threats nor the bombing and burning of the performance space prevented the growth of the movement throughout the 1982 and 1983 seasons.

23. See Kaiser-Lenoir, Claudia, ‘Argentina's Theatre of Collective Creation’. Theater (Yale University) Vol. 12, No. 1, Fall/Winter, 1980, pp. 30–3Google Scholar and Céspedes, Francisco Garzón, Ed., Teatro Latinoamericano de creation colectiva (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1979).Google Scholar

24. Ibáñez, Roberto, actor. La Natión (Buenos Aires), 08 12, 1984, p. 6, section 2.Google Scholar

25. Lejana tierra prometida (Distant Promised Land), a 1981 play by Ricardo Halac, brings up for the first time on a public stage the issue of the ‘desaparecidos’, the thousands of victims of military terror whose fate remains unaccounted for up to this day.

26. Founder in 1930 of the Teatro del Pueblo, Barletta became the head figure of the Independent Theatre movement.

27. The Independent Theatre movement stood in direct opposition to the gigantic commercial enterprise theatre had become by 1930. The independent groups represented one of the most important instances of cultural renewal in Argentina, with a wealth of theatre activity which strongly influenced the rest of Latin America.

28. Dragún, Osvaldo and Correa, Rubens in ‘Reapertura del Teatro del Pueblo. El regreso de la Utopía’ El Periodista de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires), 17–23 04 1987, p. 31.Google Scholar