Diana Taylor - Böcker

"An invaluable resource to teachers of Latin American theater, with texts that provide an accurate panorama of Latin American theater."---Adam Versenyi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"A most welcome and needed collection . . . Not only is it the first English-language anthology of theater and performance in Latin America from the Conquest onward, but it also includes excellent introductory and background material . . . certain to become an essential source book." ---Marvin Carlson, City University of New York"A rich resource for teachers and students, and for everyone intrigued by the history of performing Latin America . . . Diana Taylor and Sarah Townsend locate an animating tension between indigenous and colonial performance practices, and between the irreducibly local character of performance and the insistent pressure---as visible in the sixteenth century as in the twenty-first---of a globalizing, often oppressive modernity."---W. B. Worthen, Barnard College, Columbia UniversityStages of Conflict brings together a vast array of dramatic texts, ambitiously tracing the intersection of theater and social and political life in the Americas over the past five centuries. Including eighteen works faithfully translated into English, the collection moves from a sixteenth century Mayan dance-drama to a 2003 production by the first published indigenous playwright in Mexico. Historical pieces from the sixteenth century to the present highlight the encounter between indigenous tradition and colonialism, while contributions from modern playwrights such as Virgilio Pinero, Jose Triana, and Denise Stolkos take on the tumultuous political and social upheavals of the past century. The editors have added comprehensive critical commentary that details the origins of each play, affording scholars and students of theater, performance studies, and Latin American studies the opportunity to view the history of a continent through its rich and diverse theatrical traditions. Diana Taylor is Director of The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at New York University. Her books include the award-winning volume The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas.Sarah J. Townsend is a doctoral student at New York University.

Latin American theatre is among the most innovative in the world today. The period 1965–1970 was one of intense theatrical production in the region. Dozens of major playwrights and collective theaters produced hundreds of highly original plays. This was also a period of profound ideological and sociopolitical transformation. Hopes for Latin American self-definition and self-determination after centuries of colonization and foreign exploitation began to crumble, while the right-wing backlash produced a politics of terror.In this dynamic study, Diana Taylor proposes that, for all the diversity of peoples, languages, and cultural images in Latin America, the effects of crisis on the region's theatre are surprisingly uniform. As a cultural subsystem, theatre is both a product of and a commentary on the making and dismantling of society at large. Theatre of Crisis is an important source of information for Latin Americanists as well as theatre specialists and literary critics interested in this virtually unexplored field.

In Negotiating Performance, major scholars and practitioners of the theatrical arts consider the diversity of Latin American and U. S. Latino performance: indigenous theater, performance art, living installations, carnival, public demonstrations, and gender acts such as transvestism. By redefining performance to include such events as Mayan and AIDS theater, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and Argentinean drag culture, this energetic volume discusses the dynamics of Latino/a identity politics and the sometimes discordant intersection of gender, sexuality, and nationalisms.The Latin/o America examined here stretches from Patagonia to New York City, bridging the political and geographical divides between U.S. Latinos and Latin Americans. Moving from Nuyorican casitas in the South Bronx, to subversive street performances in Buenos Aires, to border art from San Diego/Tijuana, this volume negotiates the borders that bring Americans together and keep them apart, while at the same time debating the use of the contested term "Latino/a." In the emerging dialogue, contributors reenvision an inclusive "AmÉrica," a Latin/o America that does not pit nationality against ethnicity-in other words, a shared space, and a home to all Latin/o Americans.Negotiating Performance opens up the field of Latin/o American theater and performance criticism by looking at performance work by Mayans, women, gays, lesbians, and other marginalized groups. In so doing, this volume will interest a wide audience of students and scholars in feminist and gender studies, theater and performance studies, and Latin American and Latino cultural studies.Contributors. Judith Bettelheim, Sue-Ellen Case, Juan Flores, Jean Franco, Donald H. Frischmann, Guillermo GÓmez-PeÑa, Jorge Huerta, Tiffany Ana LÓpez, Jacqueline LazÚ, MarÍa Teresa Marrero, CherrÍe Moraga, Kirsten F. Nigro, Patrick O’Connor, Jorge Salessi, Alberto Sandoval, Cynthia Steele, Diana Taylor, Juan Villegas, Marguerite Waller

In The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory-conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances-offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo GÓmez-PeÑa’s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.

Holy Terrors presents exemplary original work by fourteen of Latin America’s foremost contemporary women theatre and performance artists. Many of the pieces-including one-act plays, manifestos, and lyrics-appear in English for the first time. From Griselda Gambaro, Argentina's most widely recognized playwright, to such renowned performers as Brazil's Denise Stoklos and Mexico’s Jesusa RodrÍguez, these women are involved in some of Latin America's most important aesthetic and political movements. Of varied racial and ethnic backgrounds, they come from across Latin America-Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Peru, and Cuba. This volume is generously illustrated with over seventy images. A number of the performance pieces are complemented by essays providing context and analysis.The performance pieces in Holy Terrors are powerful testimonies to the artists' political and personal struggles. These women confront patriarchy, racism, and repressive government regimes and challenge brutality and corruption through a variety of artistic genres. Several have formed theatre collectives-among them FOMMA (a Mayan women’s theatre company in Chiapas) and El Teatro de la mÁscara in Colombia. Some draw from cabaret and ‘frivolous’ theatre traditions to create intense and humorous performances that challenge church and state. Engaging in self-mutilation and abandoning traditional dress, others use their bodies as the platforms on which to stage their defiant critiques of injustice. Holy Terrors is a unique English-language presentation of some of Latin America's fiercest, most provocative art.ContributorsSabina BermanTania BrugueraPetrona de la Cruz CruzDiamela EltitGriselda GambaroAstrid HadadTeresa HernÁndezRosa Luisa MÁrquezTeresa RalliDiana RaznovichJesusa RodrÍguezDenise StoklosKatia TiradoEma Villanueva

"Performance" has multiple and often overlapping meanings that signify a wide variety of social behaviors. In this invitation to reflect on the power of performance, Diana Taylor explores many of its uses and iterations: artistic, economic, sexual, political, and technological performance; the performance of everyday life; and the gendered, sexed, and racialized performance of bodies. This book performs its argument. Images and texts interact to show how performance is at once a creative act, a means to comprehend power, a method of transmitting memory and identity, and a way of understanding the world.

In ¡Presente! Diana Taylor asks what it means to be physically and politically present in situations where it seems that nothing can be done. As much an act, a word, an attitude, a theoretical intervention, and a performance pedagogy, Taylor maps ¡presente! at work in scenarios ranging from conquest, through colonial enactments and resistance movements, to present moments of capitalist extractivism and forced migration in the Americas. ¡Presente!-present among, with, and to; a walking and talking with others; an ontological and epistemic reflection on presence and subjectivity as participatory and relational, founded on mutual recognition-requires rethinking and unlearning in ways that challenge colonial epistemologies. Showing how knowledge is not something to be harvested but a process of being, knowing, and acting with others, Taylor models a way for scholarship to be present in political struggles.

In ¡Presente! Diana Taylor asks what it means to be physically and politically present in situations where it seems that nothing can be done. As much an act, a word, an attitude, a theoretical intervention, and a performance pedagogy, Taylor maps ¡presente! at work in scenarios ranging from conquest, through colonial enactments and resistance movements, to present moments of capitalist extractivism and forced migration in the Americas. ¡Presente!-present among, with, and to; a walking and talking with others; an ontological and epistemic reflection on presence and subjectivity as participatory and relational, founded on mutual recognition-requires rethinking and unlearning in ways that challenge colonial epistemologies. Showing how knowledge is not something to be harvested but a process of being, knowing, and acting with others, Taylor models a way for scholarship to be present in political struggles.

A captivating exploration of identity, language, and memory, weaving together whimsical and profound vignettes that challenge our understanding of home and self in a multicultural world.In Crossings, Sylvia Molloy embarks on an evocative exploration of the intricate and profound experience of living between languages, cultures, and geographies. A pioneering Argentine writer, fluent in Spanish, English, and French, Molloy inhabited all three languages, shuttling back, forth, and between, aware that each place and each language bring forth a different self.The short entries that make up “Varied Imagination” and “Living Between Languages”—the two collections gathered in this volume for the first time—revolve around an interrelated set of questions. What makes “home”? Does language make or destabilize a sense of home? How does speaking a language or switching between languages perform one’s place in the world? These vignettes capture the realization that the most seemingly natural things in life—such as home, language, and identity—depend entirely on performance. Each act, each word communicates something, means something, does something to their specific audience; another audience might react quite differently. Molloy wrote, rewrote, edited, and reworked to find the right mix to express the estar entre or “between” that was her life.In this compelling volume, Molloy’s reflections on the fluidity of identity and the transient nature of home resonate deeply, prompting readers to contemplate the profound connections between language, place, memory, and lived experience.

A captivating exploration of identity, language, and memory, weaving together whimsical and profound vignettes that challenge our understanding of home and self in a multicultural world.In Crossings, Sylvia Molloy embarks on an evocative exploration of the intricate and profound experience of living between languages, cultures, and geographies. A pioneering Argentine writer, fluent in Spanish, English, and French, Molloy inhabited all three languages, shuttling back, forth, and between, aware that each place and each language bring forth a different self.The short entries that make up “Varied Imagination” and “Living Between Languages”—the two collections gathered in this volume for the first time—revolve around an interrelated set of questions. What makes “home”? Does language make or destabilize a sense of home? How does speaking a language or switching between languages perform one’s place in the world? These vignettes capture the realization that the most seemingly natural things in life—such as home, language, and identity—depend entirely on performance. Each act, each word communicates something, means something, does something to their specific audience; another audience might react quite differently. Molloy wrote, rewrote, edited, and reworked to find the right mix to express the estar entre or “between” that was her life.In this compelling volume, Molloy’s reflections on the fluidity of identity and the transient nature of home resonate deeply, prompting readers to contemplate the profound connections between language, place, memory, and lived experience.