LATR BOOKS
Publications
Spectacular Bodies, Dangerous Borders
Ana Elena Puga, editor (Ohio State University)
New in 2011
132 p. ISBN: 987-1-4507-7876-3
$14.00
This new anthology contains three contemporary Latin American plays that stage bodies under assault from international markets that trade flesh and bone as just another commodity. Set in 1920, in a Polish village that exports its impoverished young Jewish women to Buenos Aires brothels, Patricia Suárez's Matchmaker reminds us that the international trade in women's bodies is not just a late twentieth or twenty-first century phenomenon. For the two sex-worker mothers in The Girls from the 3.5 Floppies by Luis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio, the sale of their bodies is part of the struggle to survive daily life in a Mexican borderland marked by violence, drug addiction, and lack of economic opportunity. And in Passport, set in an unidentified railway station anywhere in the world, Venezuelan dramatist Gustavo Ott creates a protagonist caught up in whirlwind of physical assaults that brings to mind the post-9/11 insanity of places as disparate as Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or O'Hare Airport. Published in English translation for the first time, these young playwrights from Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela will provoke students, scholars, and theater lovers alike to consider how borders can wound all of us, whether or not we cross them.
David George
Nelson Rodrigues and the Invention of Brazilian Theatre
160 p. ISBN: 987-1-4507-1582-9
$19.00 New in 2010
Nelson Rodrigues and the Invention of Brazilian Drama considers the links between the playwright's tragic life story and his
multifaceted career as playwright, journalist, novelist and scriptwriter. The principal aim is to explain that his 17 plays, written
over a span of five decades, constitute dramatic murals depicting Brazilian urban society. Nelson Rodrigues was the only Brazilian
playwright of his time to do what the European Expressionists had done decades earlier: he exploded the veil of consciousness
and reason and exposed the mysteries and hidden zones of the subconscious. By examining taboos, perversions, racism, and both
the abuse of power and the powerlessness associated with social class, he opened society's abscesses and attacked its violent
sexual repression. His assault on convention and hypocrisy made his drama subversive in the eyes of Brazil's moral guardians. A
thread running through the entire project is the rejection of Nelson Rodrigues's drama both by moralizing conservatives and leftwing
theatre companies, followed by the posthumous recovery of his theatrical legacy. The most decisive factor in this recovery were the stagings of Antunes
Filho. His productions brought Rodrigues's plays into a new light by revealing their archetypal and mythic complexity. Antunes served as a model for other
directors in realizing the stunning visual potential of the playwright's work.
Beatriz J. Rizk
Imaginando un Continente: Utopía, democracia y neoliberalismo en el teatro latinoamericano
New in 2010
Tomo I: Visión general, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua y México
446 p. ISBN: 978-1-4507-1583-6
$26.00
Imaginando un Continente: Utopía, democracia y neoliberalismo en el teatro latinoamericano,
de Beatriz J. Rizk, valida la propuesta de un método de lectura, hilvanando hilos recónditos que
se entretejen en la formación de las diversas identidades, deslindando una geografía y haciendo
acopio de las muchas historias, oficiales o no, para rastrear genealógicamente los eventos teatrales
que han representado posiciones utópicas, en los diferentes países latinoamericanos, a través de
sus especificas trayectorias. Sin perder de vista la perspectiva contemporánea que se inscribe en el
largo proceso de (re)democratización de sus instituciones y en los vericuetos de la globalización
que trajo consigo la imposición del neoliberalismo en la región, este estudio es un esfuerzo por
unir cultura y política, redelineando el concepto de una ciudadanía participativa que está en la base
de la mayoría de las producciones escénicas del continente en las últimas décadas. Proyección plural de las diferentes teatralidades (rituales, sociales, políticas,
históricas y demás) que tienen lugar en su territorio, Imaginando un Continente intenta materializarse en una visión otra que abarca casi todos los pueblos
latinoamericanos y en la que recurre a un caudal de temas, presentando análisis novedosos de algunos y re-evaluando otros, pertenecientes a problemáticas
nacionales apremiantes.
Tomo II: Columbia, Venezuela, Péru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia
442 p. ISBN: 9787-1-4507-1584-3
$26.00
Imaginando un Continente: Utopía, democracia y neoliberalismo en el teatro latinoamericano,
de Beatriz J. Rizk, valida la propuesta de un método de lectura, hilvanando hilos recónditos que
se entretejen en la formación de las diversas identidades, deslindando una geografía y haciendo
acopio de las muchas historias, oficiales o no, para rastrear genealógicamente los eventos teatrales
que han representado posiciones utópicas, en los diferentes países latinoamericanos, a través de
sus especificas trayectorias. Sin perder de vista la perspectiva contemporánea que se inscribe en el
largo proceso de (re)democratización de sus instituciones y en los vericuetos de la globalización
que trajo consigo la imposición del neoliberalismo en la región, este estudio es un esfuerzo por
unir cultura y política, redelineando el concepto de una ciudadanía participativa que está en la base
de la mayoría de las producciones escénicas del continente en las últimas décadas. Proyección plural de las diferentes teatralidades (rituales, sociales, políticas,
históricas y demás) que tienen lugar en su territorio, Imaginando un Continente intenta materializarse en una visión otra que abarca casi todos los pueblos
latinoamericanos y en la que recurre a un caudal de temas, presentando análisis novedosos de algunos y re-evaluando otros, pertenecientes a problemáticas
nacionales apremiantes.
Fábula, sexo y poder:
Teatro argentino al final del siglo XX
George Woodyard, editor (University of Kansas)
Three plays by leading Argentine playwrights Roberto Cossa (Yepeto), Eduardo Rovner (Volvió una noche) and Lucía Laragione (Cocinando con Elisa) deal with the vibrant issues of Argentine culture during the 1980s and 1990s. With resonances of the brutal years of the dictatorship, plus the eternal issues of love triangles, myths, folklore and traditions, these plays provide insights into the hopes, dreams, passions and pathologies of the Argentine soul during a critical period of the nation’s history.
140 p. ISBN: 978-0-578-02201-7
$16.00
Las fronteras míticas del teatro mexicano
Stuart A. Day, editor (University of Kansas)
The plays of three prominent Mexican authors represent key examples of socially committed theatre. Mexico’s past and present are transposed in Sabina Berman’s Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda, leading the reader to question revolutionary ideals as well as gender roles. In Todos somos Marcos, Vicente Leñero delineates opposing, complex views related to the resurrection of zapatismo. Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda, in La mujer que cayó del cielo, presents the case of a Tarahumara woman trapped in a mental institution in Kansas. Each play brings history to the fore and encourages the reader to question his or her role in the present-day events that shape the world.
136 p. ISBN: 978-1-61539-743-3
$16.00
Teatro chileno y dictadura: Cuatro obras contestatarias
Oscar Lepeley, editor (University of Toledo)
During the dictatorship of Pinochet, Chilean theatre was surprisingly able to articulate a solid body of dissident works that dared to reflect critically on the experience of life under an authoritarian government. Despite the widespread censorship of dissident opinions, these plays were presented publicly in Santiago. This anthology contains four previously unpublished plays from this time period. The authors, David Benavente, Fernando Gallardo, Gonzalo Meza, Juan Radrigán and Jaime Vadell, are all prominent figures in Chilean theatre. This anthology addresses the need to recover these important works that played a role in the struggle against the dictatorship.
236 p. ISBN: 978-1-61539-744-0
$21.00
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