Latino/a performance in the 1990's.


Marrero, María Teresa. “Out of the Fringe? Out of the Closet: Latina/Latino Theatre and Performance in the 1990s”. TDR, Fall 2000, Vol. 44, No. 3, Pages 131-153.

Marrero tries to reconstruct art histories of Latino performance in the 1990's, cautiously admitting this can only constitute a partial project. She argues that following Diana Taylor, we can assert that performance, both as art and political practice have the effect of transforming cultural repertoires, thus expanding possibilities for representation. Initially Latino/a theater was oriented towards the building of communities and much too often relegated issues of gender and sexuality, privileging and implicit male, heterosexual identity, while female roles were often limited to traditional and passive women. This prompted the emergence of new forms of theater and performance that subverted women's traditional identities, as well as made visible the diversity of sexual identities within Latino/a communities, which was also fueled by the irruption of AIDS as a global pandemic. These works challenge stereotypical narratives of Latinidad and of a unitary cultural/gender identity, while not being obliging to an ideological project for either the gay/queer or the Latino/a community.

Comments

  1. JonOctober 29, 2009 at 5:15 AM

    Hmm. Does Diana Taylor really say that performance is about "transforming cultural repertoires"? Sometimes, perhaps. But at other times, surely (and Butler's notion of performance resonates with this) its also about solidifying established identities? Indeed, that's what you go on to suggest: that initially at least Latino/a was about the consolidation rather than the questioning of identity.

    I'd suggest that performance is particularly ambivalent--as indeed Taylor (and Butler) also point out. The relationship between performance and (say) "challengin[ing] stereotypical narratives" is not a simple one.

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