Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:56:56.904Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“It's a Sin to Bring Down an Art Deco”: Sabina Berman's Theater among the Ruins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Vicky Unruh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay explores the ruins trope in representations of the turn–of–the-millennium Latin American city. Like Sabina Berman in her dramatic evocation of Mexico City, Latin American artists represent urban ruins as volatile locales of cultural and historical presences that conflict and resist banishment. This analysis of Berman's Muerte súbita (“Sudden Death”), first staged in 1988, draws on recent theoretical inquiries that highlight the ruin's nonlinear juxtaposition of time frames and its association with the underbelly of Western modernity's rationalist narratives of progress and with a forward–looking critical consciousness. I examine the play's work with ruins and the ghostly presences they harbor to evoke contentious social, cultural, and artistic presences in a disintegrating Mexico City landscape. In stirring up the debris of vanishing urban utopias, works such as Berman's play constitute critical refusals of closure and conjure up unresolved cultural debates vying for a hearing. They also link the ruins trope to constructive, nonutopian imaginings of a less ruinous future and to creative engagements with the urban terrain, however devastated, in search of something of value.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 122 , Issue 1: Special Topics Cities , January 2007 , pp. 135 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Avelar, Idelber. The Untimely Present: Postdictatorial Latin American Fiction and the Task of Mourning. Durham: Duke UP, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baddeley, Oriana. “Ancient Mexican Sources of Art Deco.” Benton, Benton, and Wood 56–65.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “Excavation and Memory.” Selected Writings. By Benjamin. Vol. 2. Ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith. Trans. Rodney Livingstone et al. Cambridge: Belknap–Harvard UP, 1999. 576.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. John Osborne. London: NLB, 1977.Google Scholar
Charlotte, Benton, and Benton, Tim. “The Style and the Age.” Benton, Benton, and Wood 12–27.Google Scholar
Charlotte, Benton, Benton, Tim, and Wood, Ghislaine, eds. Art Deco, 1910–1939. London: V&A, 2003.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. Un actor se repara (Esta no es una obra de teatro). Teatro de Sabina Berman. México, DF: Mexicanos Unidos, 1985. 312–23.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. “Entrevista con Sabina Berman.” Interview with Emily Hind. Latin American Theatre Review 33.2 (2000): 133–39.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. Esta no es una obra de teatro. Teatro de Sabina Berman. México, DF: Mexicanos Unidos, 1985. 300–09.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. Molière. México, DF: Plaza & Janés, 2000.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. Muerte súbita. México, DF: Katún, 1988.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. Muerte súbita. Lenero, La nueva dramaturgia 277–353.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. Muerte súbita. Berman. Ed. Ceballos, Edgar. México, DF: Escenología, 1998. 87–158.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. Muerte súbita. Teatro americano actual: Sabina Berman, Muerte súbita. Estela Leñero, Habitación en blanco. México, DF: Casa de América, 2000. 15–90.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. Muerte súbita. Puro teatro. México, DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004. 211–65.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina. “Nota de la autora.” Leñero, La nueva dramaturgia 281.Google Scholar
Bixler, Jacqueline. “From Ecstasy to Heresy: The Theatre of Sabina Berman.” The Theatre of Sabina Berman: The Agony of Ecstasy and Other Plays. Trans. Adam Verse-nyi. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2003. xx–xxvii.Google Scholar
Berman, Sabina, comp. Sediciosas seducciones: Sexo, poder y palabras en el teatro de Sabina Berman. México, DF: Escenología, 2004.Google Scholar
Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic, 2001.Google Scholar
Burgess, Ronald D. The New Dramatists of Mexico, 1967–1985. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1991.Google Scholar
La calle de los poetas. Dir. Diego Torres Penaloza. Cinemateca Boliviana, 1999.Google Scholar
Cardoso, Rafael. “Ambiguously Modern: Art Deco in Latin America.” Benton, Benton, and Wood 396–405.Google Scholar
Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2003.Google Scholar
Day, Stuart A. E-mail to the author. 4 Sept. 2004.Google Scholar
Day, Stuart A. E-mail to the author. 10 Sept. 2004.Google Scholar
Day, Stuart A. “La sediciosa seducción de México: La grieta.” Bixler, Sediciosas seducciones 87–101.Google Scholar
Eng, David L., and Kazanjian, David. “Mourning Remains.” Introduction. Loss: The Politics of Mourning. Ed. Eng, and Kazanjian, . Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. 1–25.Google Scholar
Fritzsche, Peter. Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004.Google Scholar
Rubén, Gallo. Mexican Modernity: The Avant-Garde and the Technological Revolution. Cambridge: MIT P, 2005.Google Scholar
García Calderón, Myrna. “Writing Disaster from the Borders: Cristina Pacheco's Chronicles of Marginality.” Journal of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 8 (1996): 27–41.Google Scholar
Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997.Google Scholar
Highmore, Ben. Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huyssen, Andreas. “Nostalgia for Ruins.” Grey Room 23 (2006): 6–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leñero, Vicente. Introduction. Leñero, La nueva dramaturgia 9–39.Google Scholar
Leñero, Vicente, ed. La nueva dramaturgia mexicana. México, DF: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1996.Google Scholar
Marting, Diane. “Conundrums of Catastrophe: Mexico's Literary Response to the 1985 Earthquake.” Journal of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 8 (1996): 1–9.Google Scholar
Meléndez, Priscilla. “(In)Genio y figura hasta la sepultura: Molière, Berman y sus asedios al teatro.” Bixler, Sediciosas seducciones 129–48.Google Scholar
Meléndez, Priscilla. “Marx, Villa, Calles, Guzmàn … : Fantasmas y modernidad en Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda de Sabina Berman.” Hispanic Review 72 (2004): 523–46.Google Scholar
Merewether, Charles. “Traces of Loss.” Roth with Lyons and Merewether 25–40Google Scholar
Monsivais, Carlos. Amor perdido: Esta noche nos honran con su presencia. Guadalajara: Departamento de Bellas Artes, Gobierno de Jalisco, 1977.Google Scholar
Monsivais, Carlos. Entrada libre: Crónicas de la sociedad que se organiza. México, DF: Era, 1987.Google Scholar
Niebylski, Dianna. “Caught in the Middle: Ambiguous Gender and Social Politics in Sabina Berman's Play Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda.” Revista de estudios hispánicos 39 (2005): 153–77.Google Scholar
Nieves Martínez de, Olcoz. “Escrito en el cuerpo: Mujer, nación y memoria.” Performance, pathos, política de los sexos: Teatro postcolonial de autoras latinoamericanas. Ed. Adler, Heidrun and Rötger, Kati. Madrid: Iberoamericana; Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 1999. 54–68.Google Scholar
Mike, Pearson, and Shanks, Michael. Theatre/Archaeology. London: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Porras, Jeannette. Condesa, Hipódromo. México, DF: Clio, 2001.Google Scholar
Richard, Nelly. Cultural Residues: Chile in Transition. Trans. Alan West-Durán and Theodore Quester. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2004.Google Scholar
Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Roth, Michael. “Irresistible Decay: Ruins Reclaimed.” Roth with Lyons and Merewether 1–23.Google Scholar
Roth, Michael, with Lyons, Claire and Merewether, Charles, eds. Irresistible Decay: Ruins Reclaimed. Los Angeles: Getty Research Inst., 1998.Google Scholar
Ruins of Modernity: An International Conference at the University of Michigan, March 17–19, 2005. 16 Sept. 2006 <http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/ces/ruins/conference.htm>..>Google Scholar
Sarmiento, Oscar. “Against Indifference: José Emilio Pacheco Plots the Quake of 1985.” Journal of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 8 (1996): 61–75.Google Scholar
Stam, Robert. “Hybridity and the Aesthetics of Garbage: The Case of Brazilian Cinema.” Estudios interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 9.1 (1998). 25 Oct. 2006 <http://www.tau.ac.il/eial/IX_1/stam.html>.Google Scholar
Tavares López, Edgar. Colonia Hipódromo. México, DF: Consejo de la Crónica de la Ciudad de México, 1999.Google Scholar
Woodyard, George. “Muerte súbita y los autores frustra-dos de Sabina Berman.” Bixler, Sediciosas seducciones 175–93.Google Scholar