Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Pre-Columbian and colonial Latin America
- 2 Latin America since independence
- 3 Spanish American narrative, 1810-1920
- 4 Spanish American narrative, 1920-1970
- 5 Spanish American narrative since 1970
- 6 Brazilian narrative
- 7 Latin American poetry
- 8 Popular culture in Latin America
- 9 Art and architecture in Latin America
- 10 Tradition and transformation in Latin American music
- 11 The theatre space in Latin America
- 12 Cinema in Latin America
- 13 Hispanic USA
- Index
11 - The theatre space in Latin America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Pre-Columbian and colonial Latin America
- 2 Latin America since independence
- 3 Spanish American narrative, 1810-1920
- 4 Spanish American narrative, 1920-1970
- 5 Spanish American narrative since 1970
- 6 Brazilian narrative
- 7 Latin American poetry
- 8 Popular culture in Latin America
- 9 Art and architecture in Latin America
- 10 Tradition and transformation in Latin American music
- 11 The theatre space in Latin America
- 12 Cinema in Latin America
- 13 Hispanic USA
- Index
Summary
Practice and methodologies: space
This chapter offers an exploration of the development of the space for theatre in Latin America. It does not seek to give a detailed account of dramatists and plays, for there are now many sources for that information. Rather, it seeks, firstly, to understand the conditions for the production of theatre, and, secondly, to give a sense of the emergence of a dramatic art in Latin America. It aims also to facilitate an engagement with the thinking around the theatre, to open up for the reader some of the key ways in which this thinking has had an impact on the development of the art and to suggest a possible methodology for investigation.
Speaking of the experience of making theatre in Chile over the period from the 1970s to the 1990s, the director Jaime Vadell says:
For a while I went for simultaneity on stage: making the most of the possibility that exists in theatre that a number of things can go on at the same time, with no need to juxtapose them.
A few of our productions were based on that idea, which found its best expression in Una pena y un cariño [One part sorrow, one part tenderness]. In that play, all at the same time, there was a folkloric spectacle (that was itself a show), a game of baby football, a shantytown meeting, a woman with her baby and a drama all of her own, and two wide boys trying to get in on the action. Six different spheres of action that ran parallel to one another. It was total chaos, and I don’t know how we managed to pull it all together. Unfortunately, to do this, we needed a gigantic cast. There were 29 of us in that play.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture , pp. 258 - 281Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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