This week we began the comparative discussion of Performance (as a general, overarching concept that will sustain our interpretation of the three artistic media we are studying this semester), Theatre, and Film. We considered Diana Taylor’s concept of “Spect-Actors” drawn from Augusto Boal’s theory of the teatro del oprimido (theatre of the oppressed), as well as “Artivists (Art-Activists),” and Adam Versényi’s question “What Latin American Theatre?” We talked about escrache and H.I.J.O.S., and how social dramas inform performance in Latin America not merely as dramatic literature, but as an artistic form and plateau of individual and social agency.
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