The Unfinished Art of Theater Avantgarde Intellectuals in Mexico and Brazil

April 25, 2022 Post a Comment

Books

Northwestern University Press , 2018

A certain idea of the avant-garde posits the possibility of a rupture with the by, an act of cr... more than A certain idea of the avant-garde posits the possibility of a rupture with the past, an act of creativity that incurs no debts and is non bound by any retrospective needs. The Unfinished Art of Theater pulls back on this futuristic impulse by showing how theater became a key site for artists in two countries on the semi-periphery of commercialism to reconfigure the function of the aesthetic from effectually 1917 to 1934. Critics of the Mexican vanguardias often lament the fragmentary, failed nature of theater projects in the pivotal years of nation-building following the Mexican Revolution; discussions of modernismo in Brazil (where the " revolution " came from higher up) typically note in passing that the few plays written by avant-garde artists were never performed. Even so this book argues that precisely because of its historic weakness as a representative institution—considering the conservative stage had not (all the same) coalesced—theater was at the forefront of struggles to redefine the relationship between fine art and social change at a moment marked past the consolidation of the modern state and the ascent of a class of intellectuals identified as an international avant-garde. Drawing on original archival research, it highlights the part of little-known cultural and political actors while also challenging established views of canonical figures such equally José Vasconcelos, Oswald and Mário de Andrade, and the estridentistas. In doing and then it reveals the importance of projects and texts that belie the rhetoric of rupture and immediacy associated with the avant-garde: ethnographic operas with ties to the recording industry, populist puppet plays, short skits about indigenous life, children's radio programs most the wonders of engineering science, a philosophical drama almost the birth of a new race, and an anti-fascist spectacle written for (but never performed) at a theater shut down past the police. To borrow a phrase from Leon Trotsky, The Unfinished Art of Theater stakes a merits for the " privilege of celebrated backwardness " by showing how theater can illuminate the means in which the very category of advanced fine art is leap up in the experience of dependency, delay, and the uneven development of capitalism.

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University of Michigan Press , 2008

Stages of Disharmonize brings together a vast array of dramatic texts, ambitiously tracing the inters... more Stages of Conflict brings together a vast array of dramatic texts, ambitiously tracing the intersection of theater and social and political life in the Americas over the past five centuries. Including xviii works faithfully translated into English, the collection moves from a sixteenth century Mayan trip the light fantastic toe-drama to a 2003 production by the first published ethnic playwright in United mexican states. Historical pieces from the sixteenth century to the nowadays highlight the see between ethnic tradition and colonialism, while contributions from modern playwrights such as Virgilio Pinero, Jose Triana, and Denise Stoklos take on the tumultuous political and social upheavals of the past century.

The editors accept added comprehensive disquisitional commentary that details the origins of each play, affording scholars and students of theater, operation studies, and Latin American studies the opportunity to view the history of a continent through its rich and diverse theatrical traditions.

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Articles

American Literary History (ALH) , 2019

This article resurrects the literary source of the phrase "banana republic": O. Henry'south merely nove... more This article resurrects the literary source of the phrase "assistant democracy": O. Henry'due south simply novel, Cabbages and Kings (1904), which was inspired past his experiences in Honduras subsequently fleeing from charges of embezzlement. Set up in a fictitious state called Anchuria, the narrative grew out of 2 brusque stories titled "Money Maze" and "The Phonograph and the Graft." O. Henry is seldom considered in discussions of U.S. realism at the plough of the twentieth century; nevertheless, I argue that Cabbages and Kings parodically deploys a mode of "banana republic realism" that sheds light on the role of media technologies in the processes of imperial expansion and financialization. Given Lisa Gitelman's claim that media are "integral to a sense of what representation itself is," how exercise the ties between media and money impinge on the claims of realism—especially in enclave economies where the same corporation cultivating the export article might also command currency and communication technologies? With an eye to debates about realism in our ain era of cryptocurrencies and algorithmic trading, the article points to the banana democracy as a privileged site for agreement what happens to realist
representation at moments when media become increasingly integral to the economic system.

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Latin American Theatre Review (Special issue on Brazilian Theatre) , 2019

On May 4, 1895, an unusual opera debuted at the Theatro da Paz in the Brazilian city of Belém. Ba... more On May 4, 1895, an unusual opera debuted at the Theatro da Paz in the Brazilian city of Belém. Based on the Amazonian myth of the Iara, a water nymph who lures men to their decease with promises of eternal love and riches, Jara was composed by the local musician José Cândido da Gama Malcher, who adjusted the libretto from a verse form by the Italian explorer and ethnographer Ermanno Stradelli. Like nigh operas staged at the Theatro da Paz, it was sung in Italian and performed by a mostly Italian cast—though its protagonist appears to have been Russian and it was notable for its incorporation of words from the indigenous nheenghatu language.This essay approaches Jara and its original staging as emblematic of the Amazon's integration into international commodity circuits during the condom boom of the late nineteenth and early on twentieth centuries. Although her origins are disputed, information technology was effectually this time when the Iara was embraced amidst intellectuals and writers; during the same period, the wealth of the rubber blast helped fuel the importation of opera to the two economic capitals of Manaus and Belém. To begin, I trace the literary precursors to Gama Malcher'south opera, arguing that Iara's condition as an embodiment of the Amazonian aureola hinges on an auditory illusion that makes her phonation appear to sing out of a timeless ethnic past. The ingenuity of Jara, I keep to show, is to transform the myth into a dramatization of the ability of the operatic vocalization. Just opera is not but a vocal fine art, and in my give-and-take of the operation, I show how an attention to its theatrical elements reveals that like the figure of the Iara, opera is tied to the very mechanisms of international capital from which it promises an escape.

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Modernism/Modernity Impress+ (Special cluster "Modernism on the World Stage") , October xv, 2019

https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/flying-bat

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Modern Drama , 2018

This article offers a reappraisal of Monsieur Toussaint, a play nigh the final days of the Republic of haiti... more This article offers a reappraisal of Monsieur Toussaint, a
play about the terminal days of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint
L'Ouverture past the Martinican author and theorist Édouard Glissant.
Written betwixt 1959 and 1961, when Glissant was forced to remain
in France due to his political activities, Monsieur Toussaint was
not performed until 1977 and, past the author's own account, "was not
crafted according to the economy of theatrical representation." Rather
than taking the afterward version scénique [scenic version] as the definitive
version (as critics and translators invariably do), I consider the
not-performance of the original play every bit integral to its commentary
on the Haitian Revolution and to what Glissant calls the Antilles's
"non-history." Ultimately, I bear witness how, when faced with an impasse in
the movement for decolonization, Glissant circumvents the here and
now of "live" functioning in order to create what he calls a "prophetic
vision of the past" – a spectral phase.

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Journal of Lusophone Studies , 2018

In 1922, a few months after the Semana de Arte Moderna (the seminal consequence of Brazilian modernismo... more In 1922, a few months after the Semana de Arte Moderna (the seminal event of Brazilian modernismo), Oswald de Andrade published his first book. Originally titled 'Os condenados' but now known as 'Alma,' the novel tells the tale of a young prostitute in modernistic-24-hour interval São Paulo and the poet-telegrapher who desperately seeks to reach her love. When it first appeared many critics hailed its cinematic style, withal similar later critics of the novel and its two sequels, they overlooked i salient fact: the elusive woman on whom the plot hinges was born in the Amazon. In this article I draw out the implications of the Amazonian allusions in the trilogy now known as 'Os condenados' (originally chosen 'Trilogia do exílio') past illuminating the novels' historical backdrop and recasting earlier readings that view the three texts as allegorizing the decline of the "aureola" of art. Rather than just focusing on the encroaching commodification of fine art or the impact of technological change, I connect the aureola's and so-called decline to a shift in the regional dynamics of capital accumulation in Brazil, showing how the aestheticist cult of beauty was associated with the export economic system and a mode of uneven development most dramatically exemplified by the Amazonian rubber boom (and bust). Oswald'due south trilogy, I argue, does not depict the Amazon every bit a timeless place of primeval otherness; instead, its Amazonian allusions index the intrusion of history and the textile relations that a certain celebratory soapbox of modernismo disavows.

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Revista Hispánica Moderna , 2017

This commodity explores the relationship between writing and sound recording technologies by constr... more This article explores the human relationship between writing and sound recording technologies by constructing a genealogy of "phonographic fictions" connecting Spanish America to the United states. Starting in the early nineteenth century, the circulation of a system of shorthand known as "phonography" (or fonografía) touted the benefits of "audio-writing" for literature, commerce, and democratic law. Nevertheless these connections became more fraught with the invention of the mechanical phonograph, given that the emergence of the recording manufacture and other inscriptive technologies was fueled kickoff by the Castilian American State of war and and so by the United Fruit Visitor's creation of banana export enclaves in Central America and the Caribbean, which relied on and reinforced repressive political regimes. How did literature reply to these contradictions? The commodity dwells first on Spanish American modernismo before tracing trajectory of novels set in then-called banana republics that feature phonographs in brief but revealing roles. After examining a long-disregarded text past the U.S. writer O. Henry, it winds its way through several pillars of the Spanish American catechism─including examples of magic realism and the dictator novel─and asks how an attention to the cloth infrastructures of sound recording can shed light on the development of the Spanish American literary field.

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Cultural Critique (Special event on Comparative Radios) , 2015

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The Modernist Earth (edited by Stephen Ross and Allana Lindgren) , 2015

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Modernism/Modernity , 2010

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Revista iberoamericana , 2010

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e-misférica , 2005

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Reviews & Previews

Latin American Theatre Review , 2019

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Hispanic Review , 2016

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Mod Drama , 2015

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The Brooklyn Rail , 2005

"When picture palace began, in that location was a worldwide prophecy: "The theater is going to die!" And later on on t... more "When movie house began, there was a worldwide prophecy: "The theater is going to die!" And afterwards on television arose. Immediately, other prophets announced that television would be the end of theater. Find how the theater lives upon deaths and resurrections. From time to time, someone comes along to evangelize its decease certificate. Only the theater is alive, the theater is a most good for you cadaver."
- Nelson Rodrigues

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Northwestern University Press , 2018

A certain thought of the avant-garde posits the possibility of a rupture with the past, an act of cr... more A sure idea of the avant-garde posits the possibility of a rupture with the past, an act of creativity that incurs no debts and is not jump by whatsoever retrospective needs. The Unfinished Art of Theater pulls dorsum on this futuristic impulse past showing how theater became a key site for artists in two countries on the semi-periphery of capitalism to reconfigure the part of the aesthetic from around 1917 to 1934. Critics of the Mexican vanguardias oft complaining the bitty, failed nature of theater projects in the pivotal years of nation-building following the Mexican Revolution; discussions of modernismo in Brazil (where the " revolution " came from in a higher place) typically note in passing that the few plays written by avant-garde artists were never performed. Yet this book argues that precisely because of its celebrated weakness as a representative institution—because the bourgeois stage had not (still) coalesced—theater was at the forefront of struggles to redefine the relationship between art and social change at a moment marked past the consolidation of the modern land and the ascent of a class of intellectuals identified as an international avant-garde. Drawing on original archival research, it highlights the part of little-known cultural and political actors while also challenging established views of canonical figures such as José Vasconcelos, Oswald and Mário de Andrade, and the estridentistas. In doing and so it reveals the importance of projects and texts that belie the rhetoric of rupture and immediacy associated with the advanced: ethnographic operas with ties to the recording manufacture, populist puppet plays, short skits well-nigh indigenous life, children'due south radio programs about the wonders of technology, a philosophical drama nigh the birth of a new race, and an anti-fascist spectacle written for (but never performed) at a theater close down by the constabulary. To borrow a phrase from Leon Trotsky, The Unfinished Art of Theater stakes a claim for the " privilege of celebrated backwardness " by showing how theater can illuminate the ways in which the very category of avant-garde art is bound up in the experience of dependency, delay, and the uneven evolution of capitalism.

PaperRank:

University of Michigan Press , 2008

Stages of Conflict brings together a vast assortment of dramatic texts, ambitiously tracing the inters... more Stages of Conflict brings together a vast array of dramatic texts, ambitiously tracing the intersection of theater and social and political life in the Americas over the by 5 centuries. Including eighteen works faithfully translated into English, the collection moves from a sixteenth century Mayan trip the light fantastic toe-drama to a 2003 production by the beginning published ethnic playwright in Mexico. Historical pieces from the sixteenth century to the present highlight the come across between indigenous tradition and colonialism, while contributions from modern playwrights such as Virgilio Pinero, Jose Triana, and Denise Stoklos accept on the tumultuous political and social upheavals of the by century.

The editors have added comprehensive critical commentary that details the origins of each play, affording scholars and students of theater, operation studies, and Latin American studies the opportunity to view the history of a continent through its rich and diverse theatrical traditions.

PaperRank:

American Literary History (ALH) , 2019

This commodity resurrects the literary source of the phrase "banana republic": O. Henry's only nove... more than This article resurrects the literary source of the phrase "assistant commonwealth": O. Henry's only novel, Cabbages and Kings (1904), which was inspired by his experiences in Republic of honduras after fleeing from charges of embezzlement. Set in a fictitious country called Anchuria, the narrative grew out of ii brusk stories titled "Money Maze" and "The Phonograph and the Graft." O. Henry is seldom considered in discussions of U.Due south. realism at the turn of the twentieth century; nevertheless, I fence that Cabbages and Kings parodically deploys a way of "assistant commonwealth realism" that sheds light on the role of media technologies in the processes of imperial expansion and financialization. Given Lisa Gitelman'southward claim that media are "integral to a sense of what representation itself is," how practice the ties between media and money impinge on the claims of realism—particularly in enclave economies where the same corporation cultivating the export commodity might also command currency and communication technologies? With an centre to debates almost realism in our own era of cryptocurrencies and algorithmic trading, the article points to the banana commonwealth as a privileged site for understanding what happens to realist
representation at moments when media get increasingly integral to the economy.

PaperRank:

Latin American Theatre Review (Special event on Brazilian Theatre) , 2019

On May 4, 1895, an unusual opera debuted at the Theatro da Paz in the Brazilian urban center of Belém. Ba... more than On May 4, 1895, an unusual opera debuted at the Theatro da Paz in the Brazilian urban center of Belém. Based on the Amazonian myth of the Iara, a water nymph who lures men to their death with promises of eternal love and riches, Jara was composed by the local musician José Cândido da Gama Malcher, who adapted the libretto from a poem by the Italian explorer and ethnographer Ermanno Stradelli. Like near operas staged at the Theatro da Paz, it was sung in Italian and performed by a mostly Italian cast—though its protagonist appears to take been Russian and it was notable for its incorporation of words from the indigenous nheenghatu language.This essay approaches Jara and its original staging every bit emblematic of the Amazon's integration into international commodity circuits during the rubber blast of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although her origins are disputed, it was around this time when the Iara was embraced amid intellectuals and writers; during the same menstruation, the wealth of the rubber boom helped fuel the importation of opera to the two economic capitals of Manaus and Belém. To begin, I trace the literary precursors to Gama Malcher's opera, arguing that Iara'due south condition every bit an embodiment of the Amazonian aura hinges on an auditory illusion that makes her phonation appear to sing out of a timeless indigenous past. The ingenuity of Jara, I go along to prove, is to transform the myth into a dramatization of the ability of the operatic vocalisation. But opera is not but a vocal fine art, and in my give-and-take of the functioning, I prove how an attention to its theatrical elements reveals that like the figure of the Iara, opera is tied to the very mechanisms of international capital from which it promises an escape.

PaperRank:

Modernism/Modernity Print+ (Special cluster "Modernism on the World Phase") , October xv, 2019

https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/flight-bat

PaperRank:

Modern Drama , 2018

This article offers a reappraisal of Monsieur Toussaint, a play about the last days of the Republic of haiti... more This article offers a reappraisal of Monsieur Toussaint, a
play almost the terminal days of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint
50'Ouverture by the Martinican writer and theorist Édouard Glissant.
Written between 1959 and 1961, when Glissant was forced to remain
in France due to his political activities, Monsieur Toussaint was
non performed until 1977 and, by the author'southward own account, "was non
crafted co-ordinate to the economy of theatrical representation." Rather
than taking the later version scénique [scenic version] every bit the definitive
version (as critics and translators invariably do), I consider the
non-performance of the original play as integral to its commentary
on the Haitian Revolution and to what Glissant calls the Antilles's
"not-history." Ultimately, I show how, when faced with an impasse in
the movement for decolonization, Glissant circumvents the here and
now of "live" performance in order to create what he calls a "prophetic
vision of the past" – a spectral stage.

PaperRank:

Journal of Lusophone Studies , 2018

In 1922, a few months after the Semana de Arte Moderna (the seminal event of Brazilian modernismo... more than In 1922, a few months subsequently the Semana de Arte Moderna (the seminal event of Brazilian modernismo), Oswald de Andrade published his first volume. Originally titled 'Os condenados' simply now known as 'Alma,' the novel tells the tale of a immature prostitute in modern-solar day São Paulo and the poet-telegrapher who desperately seeks to attain her love. When it showtime appeared many critics hailed its cinematic style, notwithstanding like later on critics of the novel and its ii sequels, they disregarded 1 salient fact: the elusive woman on whom the plot hinges was born in the Amazon. In this article I draw out the implications of the Amazonian allusions in the trilogy at present known as 'Os condenados' (originally called 'Trilogia practise exílio') by illuminating the novels' historical backdrop and recasting earlier readings that view the three texts as allegorizing the decline of the "aureola" of fine art. Rather than just focusing on the encroaching commodification of art or the bear upon of technological alter, I connect the aura's then-called turn down to a shift in the regional dynamics of uppercase accumulation in Brazil, showing how the aestheticist cult of beauty was associated with the export economic system and a mode of uneven development well-nigh dramatically exemplified past the Amazonian safety boom (and bosom). Oswald's trilogy, I fence, does not depict the Amazon as a timeless identify of primeval otherness; instead, its Amazonian allusions index the intrusion of history and the cloth relations that a certain celebratory discourse of modernismo disavows.

PaperRank:

Revista Hispánica Moderna , 2017

This article explores the relationship between writing and sound recording technologies by constr... more This article explores the relationship betwixt writing and sound recording technologies by constructing a genealogy of "phonographic fictions" connecting Spanish America to the U.s.. Starting in the early nineteenth century, the circulation of a system of shorthand known every bit "phonography" (or fonografía) touted the benefits of "sound-writing" for literature, commerce, and autonomous law. Yet these connections became more fraught with the invention of the mechanical phonograph, given that the emergence of the recording manufacture and other inscriptive technologies was fueled kickoff by the Castilian American State of war and then by the United Fruit Company'due south creation of assistant export enclaves in Primal America and the Caribbean, which relied on and reinforced repressive political regimes. How did literature respond to these contradictions? The article dwells commencement on Castilian American modernismo before tracing trajectory of novels gear up in so-chosen assistant republics that characteristic phonographs in brief but revealing roles. Later on examining a long-overlooked text by the U.S. writer O. Henry, information technology winds its style through several pillars of the Spanish American catechism─including examples of magic realism and the dictator novel─and asks how an attending to the cloth infrastructures of sound recording can shed calorie-free on the evolution of the Spanish American literary field.

PaperRank:

Cultural Critique (Special issue on Comparative Radios) , 2015

PaperRank:

The Modernist Globe (edited by Stephen Ross and Allana Lindgren) , 2015

PaperRank:

Modernism/Modernity , 2010

PaperRank:

Revista iberoamericana , 2010

PaperRank:

due east-misférica , 2005

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Latin American Theatre Review , 2019

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Hispanic Review , 2016

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Modernistic Drama , 2015

PaperRank:

The Brooklyn Rails , 2005

"When cinema began, there was a worldwide prophecy: "The theater is going to dice!" And after t... more "When cinema began, there was a worldwide prophecy: "The theater is going to dice!" And after on television arose. Immediately, other prophets announced that television would be the finish of theater. Observe how the theater lives upon deaths and resurrections. From fourth dimension to time, someone comes along to deliver its death document. Only the theater is live, the theater is a almost salubrious cadaver."
- Nelson Rodrigues

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