The performing bodies of post-dictatorship Argentina in the plays of Pompeyo Audivert and Pablo Caramelo

Abstract

This paper is presented as the partial result of a research project still in development, which aims to construct a cartography of contemporary theatre in the city of Buenos Aires produced in the last twenty years (2003-2023) and which seeks to account for how the city’s theatre has represented the logic and functioning of state terrorism, carried out by the civil-military dictatorship (1976-1983) in its different aspects. We investigate the works of the so-called “second generations” of actors, playwrights, and directors (Quílez Esteve, 2020). Specifically, we analyse four plays: Corredores (2022) and La vida compartida (2014/15), by actor, playwright, and director Pablo Caramelo, on the one hand, and Tabicados (Fuente: Trelew 22 de Agosto) (2017/2018) and Edipo en Ezeiza (2013/21), by creators Andrés Mangone and Pompeyo Audivert, on the other. We argue that these pieces elaborate fragmentary performative memories that appeal to dramaturgical figures and aesthetic procedures such as palimpsest, kaleidoscope, hypertextuality, and intertextuality (de Marinis, 1997; Pinta, 2013). They are characterised by their simultaneous critical readings of the political experience of the 1970s and the country’s subsequent post-dictatorship years. These plays constitute performative acts of memory (Taylor, 2012) by configuring the stage bodies of post-dictatorship Argentina.