Katarsis: Crítica a las artes escéncias en el Perú by Rubén Quiroz Ávila (review)

Abstract

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Reviewed by:

• Katarsis: Crítica a las artes escéncias en el Perú by Rubén Quiroz Ávila
• Marin Laufenberg

Quiroz Ávila, Rubén. Katarsis: Crítica a las artes escéncias en el Perú. Lima: Máquina Purísima, 2021. 284 pp.

Aptly named, this book allows a retrospective on theatre in Perú leading up to the 2020 global pandemic, when everything changed, including theatrical arts and production. Katarsis: Crítica a las artes escénicas en el Perú is a unique archive of Peruvian theatre, putting in print and under a magnifying glass the theatre scene in Lima and wider Perú in the time period between 2017 and 2020. Rubén Quiroz Ávila has brought together his reviews of theatre works (previously published in the on-line journal Exitosa) in this compendium. These reviews are made available to a wider audience (academic and artistic) in this book, which will not simply disappear into the ether of the Internet. Moreover, these reviews of staged performances capture unique moments in time; if one did not attend the live show, reviews often serve as the only documentation of the performance.

Quiroz Ávila includes many details in each brief review (it is a sort of organized index of references)—from the names of cast members and evaluations of their contributions to assessments of lighting, music, scenery, and costume design. Often, he uses the subjective voice of the critic (as can be expected in the genre of theatre review) when speaking about the success of a particular production, the quality of the acting, or the strength of the lighting techniques, for example. While these judgments are less universally useful, they do capture one highly knowledgeable audience member’s experience in a way that might be valuable to scholars interested in audience experience and live reception.

Quiroz Ávila broaches a wide array of theatre arts in Perú. The reviews span the scope of university theatre, independent theatre, established theatre spaces and practitioners, children’s theatre, and festivals. Common threads returned to throughout include reflections on theatrical arts and connections between the individual works and the sense of Peruvian identity. [End Page 153]

The reviews often contain moments of reflection on the art of theatre itself. For instance, in a review of a children’s theatre piece, the author examines how spectators choose their seats and the difference it makes for a spectator to be located in closer proximity to a production from the lens of access and privilege. In another review, Quiroz Ávila lists the “rights of the spectator.” In yet another, he highlights the duties of the theatre critic. He also weighs in on the role of theatre in the creation of cultural capital in Perú, seeing it as a receptacle for memories and a mode of constructing a desired collective future.

The reader gains a nuanced sense of “peruanidad” in the twenty-first century through the more than 120 individual reviews contained in this volume. One can sense the shadow of violence in the recent past of Perú in some of the reflections. At one point, for example, Ávila Quiroz muses, “La presencia de la muerte no es para nada rara en este país” (91). Or in another moment, touching on corruption, he states, “Los peruanos todavía creemos que tenemos derecho a soñar, a que parte de la esperanza no ha sido destrozada por las situaciones corruptas y violentas en las que estamos inmersos” (96). Ávila Quiroz argues that “universalized” plays and messages do not impact the audience in Perú the same way that locally couched theatre productions do. He argues for the importance of nurturing further theatre in Quechua for a wider audience in the piece “Para un teatro en quechua” (255). And, he constantly reaffirms that theatre is healthy in the Perú of the twenty-first century.

One of the most notable contributions of this book lies in its ability to contrast the pre-pandemic theatre scene with that of the height of the pandemic and to thereby underscore the limitations imposed by the pandemic as well as the innovations that it produced. Quiroz Ávila includes several particularly poignant reviews towards the end of the book, including...