Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies, Objects, Archives By Paola S. Hernández. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2022; pp. viii + 219, 13 illustrations. $99.95 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book.

Many contemporary Latin American theatre artists are drawing from documentary theatre traditions to make the effects of neoliberal economic policies, uneasy transitions from dictatorship, and other structural inequities legible to domestic and international audiences. Paola S. Hernández creates a compelling snapshot of this moment in her thoroughly researched book, Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies, Objects, Archives. Hernández centers her monograph around the practices of four of Latin America’s most notable and studied artists (Vivi Tellas, Lola Arias, El Teatro Línea de Sombra, and Guillermo Calderón) in order to consider the ways that they use “the affective hold of the real” to “transform private and public memories, modes of participation, and the kinds of truth claims theater can make” (2). Each of the artists featured use biographical narratives and archival materials to explore how the use of material objects and personal narratives can complicate an understanding of the past. Hernández situates herself as part of academic lineages that are attentive to Latin American theatre of the twenty-first century, memory studies, and the emergence of innovative documentary practices in theatres across the globe. The book nicely threads the needle between focusing on the local political and cultural contexts in which the artists make their work and the ways the performances are received when presented internationally. Moreover, Hernández has a keen eye for the details of production, describing the performances and the artists’ interactions with material objects onstage in a way that brings readers, who may not have seen these works staged, into a deeper understanding of those performances. The book begins with an analysis of playwright, director, and producer Vivi Tellas’s biodramas, particularly her Proyecto Archivos, which highlights Tellas’s