Grappling with Atrocity: Guatemalan Theater in the 1990s

Predný obal
Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 2002 - 207 strán (strany)
"Guatemalan theater began to address the atrocities committed during the thirty-six years of civil war, the longest war in Latin American history, in the 1990s. This theatrical movement expresses Guatemala's hope for renewal by looking at the past. Rather than being haunted by a traumatic history, the theater pushes the painful issues forward to center stage in order that the vicious cycle of old hatreds and grudges not hold them prisoner. The plays examined in this study, which range from satire to tragedy, aid in breaking free from the bars that entrapped the country in violence and atrocities. However, the outrage is contained: the plays do not condemn the perpetrator, but rather highlight that understanding is the way to peace. The key to release from the cycle of violence is portrayed as remembering without blaming." "The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to identify how the civil war as well as the change to civilian government in 1986, which culminated in the signing of the Peace Accord in 1996, has affected the form and content of the plays written in the 1990s; and 2) to examine the work of the Guatemalan playwrights who have largely been ignored in Latin American theater studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Vyhľadávanie v obsahu knihy

Obsah

Acknowledgments 7
7
History of TwentiethCentury Guatemalan Theater
35
Satiric Theater
77
Didactic Theater
113
Symbolic Theater
148
Conclusion
179
Bibliography
197
Autorské práva

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Strana 96 - Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny. Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life ; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do. with their death, bury their parents
Strana 78 - And we might even say that the conditions are "more favorable" to satire under censorship than under liberalism — for the most inventive satire arises when the artist is seeking simultaneously to take risks and escape punishment for his boldness, and is never quite certain himself whether he will be acclaimed or punished.
Strana 18 - ... repression if the fear to speak out is still omnipresent everywhere? And how do you reach the truth if lying has become a habit? How do we keep the past alive without becoming its prisoner? How do we forget it without risking its repetition in the future? Is it legitimate to sacrifice the truth to ensure peace? And what are the consequences of suppressing that past and the truth it is whispering or howling to us? Are people free to search for justice and equality if the threat of a military intervention...
Strana 22 - For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake.
Strana 157 - The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being— that is, in terms of concrete stage images of the absurdity of existence.
Strana 157 - This is the nature of all the gallows humour and humour noir of world literature, of which the Theatre of the Absurd is the latest example. It is the unease caused by the presence of illusions that are obviously out of tune with reality that is dissolved and discharged through liberating laughter at the recognition of the fundamental absurdity of the universe. The greater the anxieties and the temptation to indulge in illusions, the more beneficial is this therapeutic effect— hence the success...
Strana 18 - How to heal a country that has been traumatised by repression if the fear to speak out is still omnipresent everywhere? And how do you reach the truth if lying has become a habit? How do we keep the past alive without becoming its prisoner? How do we forget it without risking its repetition in the future? Is it legitimate to sacrifice...
Strana 148 - Ultimately, a phenomenon like The Theatre of the Absurd does not reflect despair or a return to dark irrational forces but expresses modern man's endeavor to come to terms with the world in which he lives. It attempts to make him face up to the human condition as it really is, to free him from illusions that are bound to cause constant maladjustment and disappointment. . . . For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without...
Strana 16 - If philosophy and religion and even literature have taught us in the past that human vision expands through discovery of the best, the history of atrocity has challenged us with an enlargement of consciousness through recognition of the worst. Who can say whether such insight will inspire men to transfigure the "worst
Strana 78 - is such a protean species of art that no two scholars use the same definition or the same outline of ingredients

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