South America – Females in Theatre and Drama in the 20th and 21st Century
Salvadora Medina Onrubia
Salvadora Medina Onrubia was an Argentine playwright, poet, narrator, feminist and storyteller who was born in 1894 in La Plata in Argentina and died in 1972 in Buenos Aires. From the young age of 15, Onrubia embraced anarchist and feminist principles and she was a follower of the Russian anarchist Simon Radowitzky. Much of her life and her writings were highly political and she was a regular contributor to La Nacion, El Hogar, Critica and Faces and Masks. She was arrested and imprisoned for many of her publications.
Onrubia’s dramatic writings were mostly written for children’s and youth theatre. Her work is often characterized as Thesis Drama since it uses debate and didactic techniques to further plot through argument. Her female characters both conform with and contrast traditional representations of females. Her 1914 play Almafuerte (‘Strong Soul’), explores life in the Buenos Aires’ slums and the way that females can both accept and question the roles society and the circumstances designate to them. Public health and the political aspects of everyday life are strong themes in her work. Although she only published a small number of plays, her work is significant in its style, content and form.
Malena Sandor
Malena Sandor was an Argentinian playwright, journalist and social commentator born in Buenos Aires in 1913. Her first play Me Divorcie Papa (I Divorced Dad) was a social commentary comedy and was produced in Buenos Aires in 1937. It explores how a woman can fight to establish her own identity outside of what is designated by her family and patriarchal figure heads. Her most popular play Una mujer libree (A Free Woman) won the 1938 Argentine National Theater Award and has been translated into Portuguese, English, French and Italian. It has also been adapted to a Franco-Italian film entitled Una donna libe (1954). During the late 1930's and early 1940's she wrote three more plays An Almost Plausible Story, Penelope No Longer Weaves and The Gods Return. She moved to Europe from 1948 until 1956. In 1956, she returned to Argentina in 1956 where her play And the Answer was Given premiered. She continued to write up until her death in 1968 and her later work included librettos for radio and television programs and musical programs as well as the comic musical Give Me Your Lips Liette.
Griselda Gambaro
Griselda Gambaro, who is probably one of Argentina's greatest playwrights, is also a novelist, teen fiction writer, short story writer and essay writer. Born in 1928, her plays and other writings address the themes of war, political violence, the trauma of violence, chaos and desaparecidos (the recovery and memorialisation of dead bodies). Her major early plays were The Walls (1963), Siamese Twins (1966) and The Camp (1967). All explore the way that walls and cell-like rooms can act as prisons to the body and the mind. The protagonists of these plays deny the oppression of their situations or move to distractions as a way of coping. Ideologically, these plays show the suppression that individuals impose on themselves when they are oppressed.
By the 1970's and early 1980's, Gambaro shifted the focus of her plays to more overtly political contexts and themes. Plays like Decir Ci ('Saying Yes') (1980) and Despojamiento ('Stripped') (1974) explore the political and individual passivity of people when faced with violence and oppression. Her seminal play of the 1970's Information for Foreigners (1972) is a powerful piece of environmental theatre where audiences are literally taken on a tour through a national space of torture and disappearance. In this play, the audience rather than the torturers or the tortured become the main protagonist. The audience are not innocent by-standers but onlookers who are guilty in their silence and how they react or don't react to the violence around them.
By the end of the 1970's, Gambaro's work was banned in Argentina by Presidential order and she went into exile in Spain from the late 1970's until the 1980's. She did return briefly in 1980 for a Teatro Albiero in Buenos Aires, an event run by 150 banned writers. In the early 1980's, Gambaro started to reject stereotypes of females and create strong female characters such as Suki, a geisha who rebels in her play Del sol naciente ("From the Rising Sun") and Antigona in Antigona Furiosa (1986). This is a modern re-envisioning of Antigone and shows a woman intent on burying the disappeared people renouncing her home and refusing to remain silent.
Elisa Lerner Nagler
Elisa Lerner Nagler is a Venezuelan playwright, social commentator and essayist who was born in Valencia in 1932. Her family is of Jewish Romanian origin. She grew up in Caracas and started her working life as a journalist. She was part of the Sardio group of radical Venezuelan writers and graduated as a lawyer in 1959 from the Central University of Venezuela.
In 1961, Lerner wrote her first play In the Vast Silence of Manhattan, she explores the emotional, psychological and metaphysical landscape of a professionally accomplished woman who thinks she is a failure.
"Obviously something is wrong with me. Spinsterhood should be silent, mute."
This play like many of her others is poetically rich and emotionally charged in its contemplation on femininity and loneliness. The main character of Rosie Davies feels weighted down by gender, age and the historical inevitability of her life. She feels that if she had become a mother, she might be the controller of her dreams and memory.
Lerner's other most famous play Life with Mom (1976) centres around a daughter who is forced to tell stories to her mother otherwise she is punished by her mother. The daughter's punishment is that her mother refuses to tell the daughter about the wedding dress she wore as a young lady. The Mother withholds memory as a mark of power.
" MOTHER: You stupid irresponsible young creature. I will never again tell you of the white wedding dress which appears in my memory, my dreams.
HIJA: You can't. The wedding dress is mine. It belongs to me.
MOTHER: You broke the deal. You did not tell the story we agreed upon. I will get rid of the dream. I will get rid of the gown."
Although later in her life, Lerner stopped writing dramatic work and concentrated on satirical writing and professional writing for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, her plays are still often performed and studied in Venezuela. She also worked tirelessly in youth crime and drug prevention programs until her retirement.
Salvadora Medina Onrubia was an Argentine playwright, poet, narrator, feminist and storyteller who was born in 1894 in La Plata in Argentina and died in 1972 in Buenos Aires. From the young age of 15, Onrubia embraced anarchist and feminist principles and she was a follower of the Russian anarchist Simon Radowitzky. Much of her life and her writings were highly political and she was a regular contributor to La Nacion, El Hogar, Critica and Faces and Masks. She was arrested and imprisoned for many of her publications.
Onrubia’s dramatic writings were mostly written for children’s and youth theatre. Her work is often characterized as Thesis Drama since it uses debate and didactic techniques to further plot through argument. Her female characters both conform with and contrast traditional representations of females. Her 1914 play Almafuerte (‘Strong Soul’), explores life in the Buenos Aires’ slums and the way that females can both accept and question the roles society and the circumstances designate to them. Public health and the political aspects of everyday life are strong themes in her work. Although she only published a small number of plays, her work is significant in its style, content and form.
Malena Sandor was an Argentinian playwright, journalist and social commentator born in Buenos Aires in 1913. Her first play Me Divorcie Papa (I Divorced Dad) was a social commentary comedy and was produced in Buenos Aires in 1937. It explores how a woman can fight to establish her own identity outside of what is designated by her family and patriarchal figure heads. Her most popular play Una mujer libree (A Free Woman) won the 1938 Argentine National Theater Award and has been translated into Portuguese, English, French and Italian. It has also been adapted to a Franco-Italian film entitled Una donna libe (1954). During the late 1930's and early 1940's she wrote three more plays An Almost Plausible Story, Penelope No Longer Weaves and The Gods Return. She moved to Europe from 1948 until 1956. In 1956, she returned to Argentina in 1956 where her play And the Answer was Given premiered. She continued to write up until her death in 1968 and her later work included librettos for radio and television programs and musical programs as well as the comic musical Give Me Your Lips Liette.
Griselda Gambaro, who is probably one of Argentina's greatest playwrights, is also a novelist, teen fiction writer, short story writer and essay writer. Born in 1928, her plays and other writings address the themes of war, political violence, the trauma of violence, chaos and desaparecidos (the recovery and memorialisation of dead bodies). Her major early plays were The Walls (1963), Siamese Twins (1966) and The Camp (1967). All explore the way that walls and cell-like rooms can act as prisons to the body and the mind. The protagonists of these plays deny the oppression of their situations or move to distractions as a way of coping. Ideologically, these plays show the suppression that individuals impose on themselves when they are oppressed.
By the 1970's and early 1980's, Gambaro shifted the focus of her plays to more overtly political contexts and themes. Plays like Decir Ci ('Saying Yes') (1980) and Despojamiento ('Stripped') (1974) explore the political and individual passivity of people when faced with violence and oppression. Her seminal play of the 1970's Information for Foreigners (1972) is a powerful piece of environmental theatre where audiences are literally taken on a tour through a national space of torture and disappearance. In this play, the audience rather than the torturers or the tortured become the main protagonist. The audience are not innocent by-standers but onlookers who are guilty in their silence and how they react or don't react to the violence around them.
By the end of the 1970's, Gambaro's work was banned in Argentina by Presidential order and she went into exile in Spain from the late 1970's until the 1980's. She did return briefly in 1980 for a Teatro Albiero in Buenos Aires, an event run by 150 banned writers. In the early 1980's, Gambaro started to reject stereotypes of females and create strong female characters such as Suki, a geisha who rebels in her play Del sol naciente ("From the Rising Sun") and Antigona in Antigona Furiosa (1986). This is a modern re-envisioning of Antigone and shows a woman intent on burying the disappeared people renouncing her home and refusing to remain silent.
Elisa Lerner Nagler
Elisa Lerner Nagler is a Venezuelan playwright, social commentator and essayist who was born in Valencia in 1932. Her family is of Jewish Romanian origin. She grew up in Caracas and started her working life as a journalist. She was part of the Sardio group of radical Venezuelan writers and graduated as a lawyer in 1959 from the Central University of Venezuela.
In 1961, Lerner wrote her first play In the Vast Silence of Manhattan, she explores the emotional, psychological and metaphysical landscape of a professionally accomplished woman who thinks she is a failure.
"Obviously something is wrong with me. Spinsterhood should be silent, mute."
This play like many of her others is poetically rich and emotionally charged in its contemplation on femininity and loneliness. The main character of Rosie Davies feels weighted down by gender, age and the historical inevitability of her life. She feels that if she had become a mother, she might be the controller of her dreams and memory.
Lerner's other most famous play Life with Mom (1976) centres around a daughter who is forced to tell stories to her mother otherwise she is punished by her mother. The daughter's punishment is that her mother refuses to tell the daughter about the wedding dress she wore as a young lady. The Mother withholds memory as a mark of power.
" MOTHER: You stupid irresponsible young creature. I will never again tell you of the white wedding dress which appears in my memory, my dreams.
HIJA: You can't. The wedding dress is mine. It belongs to me.
MOTHER: You broke the deal. You did not tell the story we agreed upon. I will get rid of the dream. I will get rid of the gown."
Although later in her life, Lerner stopped writing dramatic work and concentrated on satirical writing and professional writing for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, her plays are still often performed and studied in Venezuela. She also worked tirelessly in youth crime and drug prevention programs until her retirement.
Claudia Piñeiro
Born in 1960 Claudia Piñeiro, is an Argentine playwright, novelist, crime writer and screenwriter. She initially worked as an accountant before taking to writing. One of her first plays in 2004 was How much a refrigerator is worth. This piece examines domestic life and the stories that lie beneath domestic life. This was followed soon after by The Same Green Tree in 2006. Her later work has been described as dark and absurd in its humour and portrayal of the human condition. These works include Verona (2007), Morite, Fat (2008) and Three Old Pens (2009). As her popularity grew as a crime writer, Piñeiro has written very little work for the theatre.
Born in 1960 Claudia Piñeiro, is an Argentine playwright, novelist, crime writer and screenwriter. She initially worked as an accountant before taking to writing. One of her first plays in 2004 was How much a refrigerator is worth. This piece examines domestic life and the stories that lie beneath domestic life. This was followed soon after by The Same Green Tree in 2006. Her later work has been described as dark and absurd in its humour and portrayal of the human condition. These works include Verona (2007), Morite, Fat (2008) and Three Old Pens (2009). As her popularity grew as a crime writer, Piñeiro has written very little work for the theatre.
Ana Maria Gonçalves
Born in Ibiá, Minas Gerais in Brazil in 1970, Goncalves is a Brazilian playwright and screenwriter who has worked in Brazil and the United States of America. Her plays explore what it is like to live as a black woman in modern day societies like Brazil where racial and gender prejudice are prominent.
Her first dramas were written in 2001 and are the verse dramas Beside You - On the Edge of What You Feel for Me and A Defect of Colour. After working as a lecturer in race relations and also as a writer in residence at Tulane, Stanford and Middlebury, she returned to São Paulo in Brazil and in 2016 she wrote her most famous play Diverse. The play explores the relationship of a couple João and Márcia and their efforts to stray away from the prejudices of a racist and sexist society. Fortified by João (a black 28 year old), Márcia, a 40 years old and of mixed race, slowly begins to examine and reclaim her black roots. João must re-examine himself and whether he can cope with and not be intimidated by Márcia’s new sense of purpose and identity.
Goncalves’ plays and writings have been performed and published in many languages and many countries including Brazil, Portugal, the United States of America and Italy.
Cidinha da Silva
Cidinha da Silva is a powerful playwright and novelist from Belo Horizonte in Brazil. Author of 11 books, she chronicles the lives of adults and writes short stories and romance for children and adolescents. Her play "Got pregnant, gave birth to horses and learned how to fly without wings" is a strong magic realism and surrealist drama revealing the daily routine of six black women who live in the same apartment building. They have no interaction nor do they know each other, however, their similar yearnings reveal the private truth of buried affections. She organized two fundamental works on contemporary race relations in Brazil: Affirmative actions in education: Brazilian experiences (2003) (Ações afirmativas em educação: experiências brasileiras) and African racial relations: inputs for public policies of books, reading, literature and libraries in Brazil (2014) (Africanidades e relações raciais: insumos para políticas públicas na área do livro, leitura, literatura e bibliotecas no Brasil).
Marcia Zanelatto
Marcia Zanelatto is a Brazilian playwright and screenplay writer. Her most famous play is The Body’s Night. The plot of the play follows Clara and Isabel who are beautiful, young, talented, and in love. But the meaning of life is questioned when one of them is diagnosed with a degenerative disease. With the support of the doctor and friend, Paula, Isabel deals with the reality, finding new limitations of power and courage that she never thought she would have.
Zanelatto lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, where she writes for theatre, television and cinema, and teaches script writing. Her work often engages with ideas of racism, public security, and sexual and gender identity. She has received several awards, including the Brazil at Scene Award 2009 (Prêmio Brasil em Cena) for the play Time of Solitude (Tempo de Solidão), the Favelas Award from the Ford Foundation for the play They ain’t Got No (Eles não usam tênis naique); and the 2014 Theatre Producers Association of Rio de Janeiro Award (Prêmio APTR) for Best Author, with the play Frumpiness (Desalinho). In 2016, the Royal Exchange Theater, Manchester, UK, commissioned a new work for the Birth Festival, which resulted in her play The Birth Machine. Her work has been translated into English, Spanish, French and Swedish.
Marcia Zanelatto is a Brazilian playwright and screenplay writer. Her most famous play is The Body’s Night. The plot of the play follows Clara and Isabel who are beautiful, young, talented, and in love. But the meaning of life is questioned when one of them is diagnosed with a degenerative disease. With the support of the doctor and friend, Paula, Isabel deals with the reality, finding new limitations of power and courage that she never thought she would have.
Ana Paula Arendt
Ana Paula Arendt is a Brazilian playwright, screenplay writer, diplomat, poet and children’s book author who was born in 1980. She often writes under the pseudonym of R. P. Alencar. Her most famous play is the much awarded The Constituent which is a verse drama.
Arendt was born in Rondonia in Brazil. She spent a significant part of her life living in Rio Branco where she lived with and was heavily influenced by the Indigenous Kaxarari tribes and clans and their stories. She eventually moved to São Paulo, Montevideo, and then Brasilia. Many of her plays are verse dramas concerned with issues of power, gender and the environment and much of her poetry is also is also performed. Most of her work is done in both Portuguese and French. Her plays and performed poetry include The Constituent (2015), Callista (2015), The Creation of Pindorama (Portuguese, 2015) and The Venerable Virtues of Men (2016).
References for South America – Females in Theatre and Drama in the 20th and 21st Century
Agosin, A. (ed.). (1999). Passion, Memory and Identity.- Twentieth Century Latin American Jewish Women Writers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. pp.170-175.
Arendt, A.P. (2015). The Constituent. (English Edition). eBook: Ana Paula Arendt. Retrieved amazon.com 2019-04-20.
Bigott Foundation. (2006). Biography of Elisa Lerner in 'Slow Death'. Equinox. New York: Bigott Foundation.
Boorman, J.R. (1979). Contemporary Latin American Woman Dramatists. Rice University Studies. Rice University Press: Houston, TX. Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4466307.pdf
Evoé Collective. (2017). Meet the Playwrights of Female Voices from Brazil. Retrieved April 8, 2019 from https://www.evoecollective.com/single-post/2017/10/19/Meet-the-Playwrights-of-Female-Voices-From-Brazil
Farnsworth, M.S. (2017). Sex Work, Sickness, and Suicide: Argentine Feminist Theatre in the 1910s and 1920s. New York: Hemispheric Institute. Retrieved from
https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/e-misferica-61/farnsworth.html
Gardner, A. (January 6, 2017). 10LatinX , Hispanic and Chicocano/a Playwrights You Should Know. Retrieved from
https://performerstuff.com/mgs/10-twentieth-century-latinx-hispanic-and-chicanoa-playwrights-you-should-know/
Larson, C. & Vargas, M. (1999). Latin American Women Dramatists. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IND.
Arendt, A.P. (2015). The Constituent. (English Edition). eBook: Ana Paula Arendt. Retrieved amazon.com 2019-04-20.
Bigott Foundation. (2006). Biography of Elisa Lerner in 'Slow Death'. Equinox. New York: Bigott Foundation.
Boorman, J.R. (1979). Contemporary Latin American Woman Dramatists. Rice University Studies. Rice University Press: Houston, TX. Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4466307.pdf
Evoé Collective. (2017). Meet the Playwrights of Female Voices from Brazil. Retrieved April 8, 2019 from https://www.evoecollective.com/single-post/2017/10/19/Meet-the-Playwrights-of-Female-Voices-From-Brazil
Farnsworth, M.S. (2017). Sex Work, Sickness, and Suicide: Argentine Feminist Theatre in the 1910s and 1920s. New York: Hemispheric Institute. Retrieved from
https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/e-misferica-61/farnsworth.html
Gardner, A. (January 6, 2017). 10LatinX , Hispanic and Chicocano/a Playwrights You Should Know. Retrieved from
https://performerstuff.com/mgs/10-twentieth-century-latinx-hispanic-and-chicanoa-playwrights-you-should-know/
Larson, C. & Vargas, M. (1999). Latin American Women Dramatists. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IND.
Gardner, A. (January 6, 2017). 10LatinX , Hispanic and Chicocano/a Playwrights You Should Know. Retrieved from
https://performerstuff.com/mgs/10-twentieth-century-latinx-hispanic-and-chicanoa-playwrights-you-should-know/
Larson, C. & Vargas, M. (1999). Latin American Women Dramatists. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IND.
Solorzano, C. Sanchez, R. & Schooner, P. (1965). The Contemporary Latin Theatre. Prairie Schooner. Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer 1965), pp.118-125. University of Nebraska: Lincoln, NE.
Socorro, M. (April 6, 2000). 'Elisa Lerner, an athlete of Loneliness'. Venezuela Analytical Magazine. Caracas: Venezuela Analytical Magazine.
Solorzano, C. Sanchez, R. & Schooner, P. (1965). The Contemporary Latin Theatre. Prairie Schooner. Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer 1965), pp.118-125. University of Nebraska: Lincoln, NE.
Socorro, M. (April 6, 2000). 'Elisa Lerner, an athlete of Loneliness'. Venezuela Analytical Magazine. Caracas: Venezuela Analytical Magazine.
Socorro, M. (April 6, 2000). 'Elisa Lerner, an athlete of Loneliness'. Venezuela Analytical Magazine. Caracas: Venezuela Analytical Magazine.
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