On Wednesday, September 3 we discussed the origins of theatre, film, and performance art as we understood them to have happened separately. Chronologically first, theatre originated in Antiquity, especially Ancient Greece, and then in the sixteenth- seventeenth-centuries in the Hispanic world with the Spanish Comedia (the first professional theatre of Spain, which Margaret Wilson’s reading helped us see better in a world of ‘controversy’). Second, film in the nineteenth century as a result of developments of imaging machines, which the reading by Amy Villarejo helped us understand, and we will return to throughout the semester. Finally, we tapped on the matter of the origins of Performance Art, led by Diana Taylor’s reading “Performance Histories.” We talked about the installation Mujeres en la plaza by Patricia Ariza (Bogotá, 2009), which Taylor interprets as an intertext between women and violence in Colombia.
Hemispheric Institute 7th Encuentro: Staging Citizenship, Cultural Rights in the Americas (Bogotá, Colombia, August 2009)
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