Politics and Violence in Cuban and Argentine Theater

KATHERINE FORD, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at East Carolina University, USA.

• Introduction: Considering Dramatic Violence: The Caso Padilla and the Manipulation of a Public Spectacle Who's Afraid of Virgilio Piñera?: Construction of Violence through Fear in Dos viejos pánicos (1968) The Cobwebs of Memory: History made through Violence in Abelardo Estorino's La dolorosa historia del amor secreto de don José Jacinto Milanés (1974) Filming the Bourgeoisie: Defining Identity with Violence in Eduardo Pavlovsky's La mueca (1971) Disorderly Conduct: The Violence of Spectatorship in Griselda Gambaro's Información para extranjeros (1973) Transforming Spectacles

"Ford sets up appropriate chronological and geographical goals as she deals with the complex topic of violence and its theatrical representations.The fact that the author chooses two countries - Cuba and Argentina - considered culturally different within Spanish America with extremely distinguished theatrical histories and also very turbulent political ones in the twentieth century, allows her to uncover the diverse manifestations of psychological, physical, and political violence in a period of six years of theatrical production: 1968-1974. Theseyears are profoundly significant in the two countries political development since they represent periods when repression was particularly blatant.Thisbook will be an asset to specialists in the field of Spanish American theater, and to students and scholars interested in examining the issue of violence in Spanish American literature." - Priscilla Meléndez, University of Connecticut