Politics and Violence in Cuban and Argentine Theater

This book looks at Cuban and Argentine theater of the late 1960s and early 1970s to see how the idea of spectacle as violence was used to comment on and question the social and political violence that was unfolding offstage. Front Matter....Pages i-xxii Introduction: Difficult Times: Considering Dramatic Violence....Pages 1-23 Who’s Afraid of Virgilio Piñera? Violence and Fear in Dos viejos pánicos (1968)....Pages 25-56 Cobwebs of Memory: History Made with Violence in Abelardo Estorino’s La dolorosa historia del amor secreto de don José Jacinto Milanés (1974)....Pages 57-95 Filming the Bourgeoisie: Defining Identity with Violence in Eduardo Pavlovsky’s La mueca (1970)....Pages 97-135 Disorderly Conduct: The Violence of Spectatorship in Griselda Gambaro’s Información para extranjeros (1973)....Pages 137-173 Conclusion: Transforming Spectacles....Pages 175-179 Back Matter....Pages 181-219 This book examines how violence was used as a spectacle in Cuban and Argentine theater in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a reflection of and a dialogue with the violence occurring in the public arena. Using the international affair of the Caso Padilla as a way to appreciate how the notion of revolutionary spectacle pertains to culture, Ford deftly examines the use of violence in four plays from Cuba and Argentina to understand how simulated violence was used as a tool to address the very real violence that was taking place offstage