Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico

by Ruth Hellier-Tinoco

Overview

This book proposes the innovative concept of palimpsest bodies to interpret provocative theatre and performance experiments, exploring issues of cultural memory, history, transgression, and community transformation. Combined with ideas of postmemory and rememory, palimpsest bodies are inherently trans-temporal as they perform re-visions of embodied gestures, vocalized calls, and sensory experiences.
 
Focusing on four projects from one of Mexico’s most significant contemporary theatre companies, La Máquina de Teatro, directed by renowned artists Juliana Faesler and Clarissa Malheiros, this study documents the rigorous performances of layered, plural, and trans identities as collaborative, feminist, and queer re-visions of official histories and collective memories, using ideas of scenarios, archives, and remains. Illustrated with over 100 color photos, Performing Palimpsest Bodies will appeal to artists and scholars interested in contemporary theatre and performance studies, critical dance studies, and collective creation.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781841504667
Publisher:	Intellect, Limited
Publication date:	07/15/2019
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Ruth Hellier-Tinoco is professor of performing arts, music, theater, and dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and editor in chief of the multidisciplinary journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos.
 

Table of Contents

List of illustrations ix

Acknowledgements xiii

Section 1 Outlines 1

Introduction: Creating theatre through remains of bodies of history 3

Chapter 1 Performing re-visions: Palimpsests, postmemory, rememory and remains 23

Chapter 2 La Máquina de Teatro: Trans-temporal theatres, bodies and environments in Mexico 41

Section 2 Four Performance Projects 67

Chapter 3 Mexican Trilogy: Scenic correlation of memory and times 69

Five performers, three years, three entangled parts:

1 Nezahualcóyotl/Scenic Correlation of Memory and Times;

2 Moctezuma II/The Dirty War;

3 Malinche/Malinches

Chapter 4 Zapata, Death Without End 127

Five collectives, one year, co-participatory performance

Chapter 5 War in Paradise 155

Twenty-five performers, three weeks, work-in-progress

Chapter 6 Time of the Devil 167

Trans-solo, one body, many body parts

Epilogue: Theatre for generating futures: Performing archives, remaining differently 179

References 197

Notes 221

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

"[Hellier-Tinoco] offers an in-depth look at La Máquina de Teatro, documenting and analyzing four of the company’s recent projects. . . . By shining a spotlight on La Máquina, Hellier-Tinoco through her book also calls attention to what she characterized as the 'profound and exhilarating' performance and theater happening throughout Mexico more broadly."

The Current

"The book is unconventional in format and methodology, but it serves a greater purpose by archiving and presenting the work of La Máquina de Teatro to an English-speaking audience that otherwise might not have encountered the group or its pieces. With well over 300 color photographs . . . this book presents the work of the Mexican theatre company in a way that is accessible to scholars, artists, and students."

Latin American Theatre Review Jimmy A. Noriega

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