Postmodern Realism and Unreality in Griselda Gambaro’s Theatre of Crisis
Abstract: First produced in 1972, just a few years before the start of Argentina’s “Dirty War” and the accompanying intensification of enforced disappearances, Griselda Gambaro’s Information for Foreigners stages many of the political and aesthetic strategies that later sustained the final military junta’s regime of terror. The non-narrative plot, abrupt changes of location, and graphic depictions of violence combine in a uniquely hostile experience for audiences, unsettling and subverting their coherent lifeworld inside of the play. These aesthetic components structure what I deem “unreality,” a disjointed and confounding world that defies reason, unraveling audiences’ very experience of the real. Gambaro curates this unreality as an essential facet of her “theatre of crisis,” which Diana Taylor identifies with experiences of disorientation, vulnerability to violence, and normalization by authority. Through a synthesis of Lukács’s concept of realist aesthetics, Brecht’s modernist realism, and Taylor’s evaluation of Gambaro’s theatrical world, I interpret Gambaro’s application of postmodernist aesthetics as a necessary strategy to achieve meaningful realism within the context of theatre of crisis.Term paper for Drama L15 449: Seminar in Dramatic Theory, Spring 2023
Professor Julia Walker
Washington University in St. Louis