{"title":"Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage ed. by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (review)","authors":"Trevor Boffone","doi":"10.1353/dtc.2023.a912007","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage ed. by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos Trevor Boffone Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage. Edited by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Hardback $135.00, Paper $39.95. 296 pages. When one considers classical Greek and Roman theatre, Latin America might not immediately spring to mind. After all, the Americas are geographically and temporally a world away from the likes of Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles. As Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos’s edited collection Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage reveals, however, there is far more to this relationship than meets the eye. In fact, throughout the twentieth century and well into the present, Latin American dramatists have turned to the classics to make sense of sociopolitical struggles. Highlighting the afterlife of classical Greek and Roman theatre throughout the Americas, the collection offers a critical intervention not only into studies of theatre in the Hemispheric Americas but also into studies of ancient theatre. The book’s introduction offers a brief history of Greco-Roman classics in Latin America. At every turn, the book reiterates how Greco-Roman influence throughout Latin America is not monolithic. To demonstrate this, chapters explore how Latin American dramatists rewrite classic theatre to speak to sociopolitical issues relevant to specific communities and time periods. Authors consider how these sociopolitical issues are transhistoric and transnational, which informs how Greco-Roman drama is received in distinct eras and countries throughout the Americas. Each chapter focuses on one or two plays to underscore the playwright’s motivations and processes for engaging with ancient European myths, thus revealing how theatre-making can be a tool for social change. Although Latin America is understudied in both classical theatre studies and theatre studies writ large, case studies in Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage demonstrate how Latin American dramatists have frequently turned to the classics as sources for adaptations through which to speak to current events. The book questions how Greco-Roman dramaturgy converges with issues such as race, religion, gender, and Indigenous sovereignty in ways that are applicable to specific regions. Greco-Roman legacies in the Americas vary “depending on the location in question and the European nation by which it was colonized” (4). As such, there is neither a singular definition of Latin American culture nor a singular Latin American method of adapting the classics. The strategies of playwrights responding to the Pinochet regime in Chile, for instance, are distinct from how dramatists on the US-Mexico border comment on the femicides in Juárez. Although these playwrights might be linked through geography (at best), each brings their specific cultural specificities and sociopolitical realities to the task of adapting classical theatre to comment on their community. Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage is divided into three sections, each representing a different region: (1) the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay), [End Page 75] (2) Brazil, and (3) the Caribbean and North America. While each section is culturally and regionally specific, the ability of ancient theatre to speak to the present serves as a throughline. For example, in chapter 4, Irmtrud König focuses on how Juan Radrigán’s Medea Mapuche (2000) situates Euripides’s play within Chile’s Mapuche community to highlight their continued marginalization following Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship. Radrigán connects Chilean history with Greek drama to comment on the social exclusion of and discrimination against the Mapuche. As Radrigán posits, the play speaks to the possible revenge of peoples who have been wronged; in this case, the genocide and subsequent marginalization of the Mapuche people by the Spanish fosters a desire for revenge in the former. In a similar vein, in chapter 9, Seth A. Jeppesen proposes that Sophocles’s Antigone is fundamental to exploring the sociopolitical upheaval in twentieth-century Brazil. Jeppesen examines Jorge Andrade’s 1958 play Pedreira das Almas (Quarry of Souls) to underscore the relationship between personal freedoms and the unchecked power of the State. Much as Antigone was in ancient Greece, Andrade’s play has come to be seen as a piece...","PeriodicalId":488979,"journal":{"name":"Journal of dramatic theory and criticism","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of dramatic theory and criticism","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dtc.2023.a912007","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Reviewed by: Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage ed. by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos Trevor Boffone Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage. Edited by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Hardback $135.00, Paper $39.95. 296 pages. When one considers classical Greek and Roman theatre, Latin America might not immediately spring to mind. After all, the Americas are geographically and temporally a world away from the likes of Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles. As Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos’s edited collection Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage reveals, however, there is far more to this relationship than meets the eye. In fact, throughout the twentieth century and well into the present, Latin American dramatists have turned to the classics to make sense of sociopolitical struggles. Highlighting the afterlife of classical Greek and Roman theatre throughout the Americas, the collection offers a critical intervention not only into studies of theatre in the Hemispheric Americas but also into studies of ancient theatre. The book’s introduction offers a brief history of Greco-Roman classics in Latin America. At every turn, the book reiterates how Greco-Roman influence throughout Latin America is not monolithic. To demonstrate this, chapters explore how Latin American dramatists rewrite classic theatre to speak to sociopolitical issues relevant to specific communities and time periods. Authors consider how these sociopolitical issues are transhistoric and transnational, which informs how Greco-Roman drama is received in distinct eras and countries throughout the Americas. Each chapter focuses on one or two plays to underscore the playwright’s motivations and processes for engaging with ancient European myths, thus revealing how theatre-making can be a tool for social change. Although Latin America is understudied in both classical theatre studies and theatre studies writ large, case studies in Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage demonstrate how Latin American dramatists have frequently turned to the classics as sources for adaptations through which to speak to current events. The book questions how Greco-Roman dramaturgy converges with issues such as race, religion, gender, and Indigenous sovereignty in ways that are applicable to specific regions. Greco-Roman legacies in the Americas vary “depending on the location in question and the European nation by which it was colonized” (4). As such, there is neither a singular definition of Latin American culture nor a singular Latin American method of adapting the classics. The strategies of playwrights responding to the Pinochet regime in Chile, for instance, are distinct from how dramatists on the US-Mexico border comment on the femicides in Juárez. Although these playwrights might be linked through geography (at best), each brings their specific cultural specificities and sociopolitical realities to the task of adapting classical theatre to comment on their community. Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage is divided into three sections, each representing a different region: (1) the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay), [End Page 75] (2) Brazil, and (3) the Caribbean and North America. While each section is culturally and regionally specific, the ability of ancient theatre to speak to the present serves as a throughline. For example, in chapter 4, Irmtrud König focuses on how Juan Radrigán’s Medea Mapuche (2000) situates Euripides’s play within Chile’s Mapuche community to highlight their continued marginalization following Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship. Radrigán connects Chilean history with Greek drama to comment on the social exclusion of and discrimination against the Mapuche. As Radrigán posits, the play speaks to the possible revenge of peoples who have been wronged; in this case, the genocide and subsequent marginalization of the Mapuche people by the Spanish fosters a desire for revenge in the former. In a similar vein, in chapter 9, Seth A. Jeppesen proposes that Sophocles’s Antigone is fundamental to exploring the sociopolitical upheaval in twentieth-century Brazil. Jeppesen examines Jorge Andrade’s 1958 play Pedreira das Almas (Quarry of Souls) to underscore the relationship between personal freedoms and the unchecked power of the State. Much as Antigone was in ancient Greece, Andrade’s play has come to be seen as a piece...
书评:《拉丁美洲舞台上的希腊人和罗马人》,作者:罗莎Andújar和康斯坦丁诺斯·p·尼古卢索斯·特雷弗·博夫尼。编辑罗莎Andújar和康斯坦丁诺斯P.尼古拉索斯。布卢姆斯伯里学术,2020。精装本135美元,平装本39.95美元。296页。当人们想到古典希腊和罗马戏剧时,拉丁美洲可能不会立即出现在脑海中。毕竟,美洲在地理上和时间上都与阿里斯托芬、欧里庇得斯和索福克勒斯等人相距甚远。然而,正如罗莎Andújar和康斯坦丁诺斯·p·尼古拉索斯(Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos)编辑的文集《拉丁美洲舞台上的希腊人和罗马人》(Greeks and Romans on Latin American Stage)所揭示的那样,这种关系远比表面上看到的要复杂得多。事实上,从整个二十世纪一直到现在,拉丁美洲的剧作家们都转向经典来理解社会政治斗争。该系列突出了整个美洲古典希腊和罗马戏剧的来世,不仅为西半球美洲的戏剧研究提供了重要的干预,也为古代戏剧研究提供了重要的干预。这本书的引言简要介绍了拉丁美洲的希腊罗马经典。在每一个转折点上,这本书都重申了希腊罗马对整个拉丁美洲的影响并不是单一的。为了证明这一点,章节探讨了拉丁美洲剧作家如何改写经典戏剧,以讲述与特定社区和时期相关的社会政治问题。作者考虑这些社会政治问题是如何跨越历史和跨国的,这告诉希腊罗马戏剧是如何在整个美洲不同的时代和国家接受的。每一章都聚焦于一到两部戏剧,以强调剧作家参与古代欧洲神话的动机和过程,从而揭示戏剧创作如何成为社会变革的工具。尽管拉丁美洲在古典戏剧研究和戏剧研究方面都没有得到充分的研究,但对拉丁美洲舞台上的希腊人和罗马人的案例研究表明,拉丁美洲剧作家如何经常将经典作为改编的来源,通过这些改编来讲述当前的事件。这本书质疑希腊罗马戏剧如何以适用于特定地区的方式与种族、宗教、性别和土著主权等问题融合在一起。希腊-罗马在美洲的遗产因“所涉及的地点和被其殖民的欧洲国家”而异(4)。因此,拉丁美洲文化既没有单一的定义,也没有单一的拉丁美洲改编经典的方法。例如,剧作家对智利皮诺切特政权的回应策略,与美国-墨西哥边境的剧作家对Juárez上屠杀女性的评论截然不同。尽管这些剧作家可能通过地理(充其量)联系在一起,但每个人都将其特定的文化特征和社会政治现实带入了改编古典戏剧以评论其社区的任务中。《拉丁美洲舞台上的希腊人和罗马人》分为三个部分,每个部分代表一个不同的地区:(1)南锥体(阿根廷、智利和乌拉圭),(2)巴西,(3)加勒比和北美。虽然每个部分都是文化和地区特有的,但古代剧院与现在对话的能力是贯穿始终的。例如,在第四章中,Irmtrud König关注Juan Radrigán的《美迪亚·马普切》(2000)如何将欧里庇得斯的戏剧置于智利马普切社区,以突出他们在奥古斯托·皮诺切特的军事独裁统治后继续被边缘化。Radrigán将智利历史与希腊戏剧联系起来,评论社会对马普切人的排斥和歧视。正如Radrigán所假定的那样,该剧讲述了被冤枉的人们可能进行的报复;在这种情况下,西班牙人对马普切人的种族灭绝和随后的边缘化助长了前者的复仇欲望。同样,在第9章中,赛斯·a·杰普森提出,索福克勒斯的《安提戈涅》是探索20世纪巴西社会政治动荡的基础。Jeppesen研究了Jorge Andrade 1958年的戏剧《灵魂的采石场》(Pedreira das Almas),以强调个人自由与不受约束的国家权力之间的关系。就像古希腊的安提戈涅一样,安德拉德的剧本也被视为一部……