Visibility of violence in contemporary Latin-American theater: El año en que nací, by Lola Arias, La mujer puerca y Mau Mau, o la tercera parte de la noche, by Santiago Loza

Abstract

From the three works by two Argentinean authors, we reflect on two aesthetic and political possibilities of contemporary dramaturgies that produce collective and individual memories and traumas. From a dramaturgy of the author, in La mujer puerca (Santiago Loza) the principles that sustain the normative platforms of Latin-American societies are questioned and in Mau Mau, o la tercera parte de la noche (also by Santiago Loza) two women, witnesses of the glamour of the 1960’s, wander around from endless parties joined to the most violent repression and the decadence at the return of democracy. In El año en que nací, by Lola Arias, the performers use personal documents and objects to reconstruct collectively experiences of the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990). Causing tension between the boundaries of the fictional and the biographical, the dramaturgy articulates the textuality of this youth that asks for a place in the process of reconstruction of a socially jeopardized present.