Theater—Género Chico and Antifascism

Abstract

The Confederadas’ stage productions built on a tradition of the vanguards of the 1920s and 1930s; they comprised satiric dramatizations, comedies of manners, and light musicals. The humor and lyricism of popular genres, or género chico, reinvented the conditions of exile as an aesthetic experience of self-representation and political action. Also, the Confederadas’ theater intersected with anarchist aesthetics and with a well-established popular and Hispanic theatrical scene in New York. Exile also modified género chico plays with American and immigrant characters, which allowed the audience to reflect on their antifascist fight and their emerging ethnic identity in the United States. Marked by parodic self-representation, the popular dramaturgical genres ridiculed fascist narratives through comedy and farce.