Trans/Acting

Trans/Acting: Latin American and Latino Performing Arts comprises fourteen new essays by leading scholars of Latin American and US Latino theater as well as the performance script Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator by Guillermo Gomez-Pena. The essays focus on contemporary Latin American and US Latino dramatic texts and performances. They range from a panoramic view of transculturation in twentieth-century Latin American theater to in-depth analyses of individual plays from Cuba (Abelardo Estorino), Mexico (Sabina Berman, Vicente Lenero, Paquita la del Barrio), Argentina (Rafael Spregelburd, Patricia Suarez, Susana Torres Molina), Uruguay (Gabriel Peveroni), and the US (Guillermo Reyes, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and the Original Latin Kings of Comedy). By deploying the concept of trans/acting, with its connotations of negotiation and/or exchange, in various theoretical ways the essays explore and challenge the parameters of culturation, nationalism, gender, genre, translation, and adaptation in the context of globalization, shifting borders, and new cultural paradigms. The study of contemporary theater and performance arts in this volume is complemented by trans/actor Gomez-Pena's Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator, a strikingly transgressive script that underscores the performative nature of territorial and symbolic border crossings. Exploring the transformation of Latin American theater from the local to the global and the national to the transnational, Trans/Acting will appeal to scholars of Latin American studies, performance art, and globalization.