Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (27)
OUT
OF THE FRINGE
CONTEMPORARY
LATINA/LATINO
THEATRE
AND PERFORMANCE
Carida
SVICH & Maria Teresa MARRERO , Editors
READING NOTES
AND REVIEWS
Dr Jacques
COULARDEAU
Pen Discussion
Session
This
collection of ten plays is one of the strangest collections I know. Most
authors are women. The theme of Chicana women is central and lesbianism is
shown as some kind of escape from the Post Colonial Traumatic Stress Syndrome
of Chicano men and Chicana women.
Among
these plays there is a rewriting of Medea’s myth from this lesbian point of
view that is phenomenal in many ways and particularly in the fact that Medea is
making herself a lesbian to protect and save her motherhood that leads her to
killing her own son not to lose him to his father and hence lose her motherhood,
not seeing that she kills her motherhood at the same time, which becomes final
in the end when the dead son brings poison to his own institutionalized mother
and thus terminates her like some kind of vermin. Out of love . . . for sure!
At
the same time the consciousness of that Post Colonial Traumatic Stress Syndrome
is not clearly captured which leads to mourning the dead Chicano soldiers in
the American imperialistic wars without denouncing these wars per se.
I
just wonder if these authors have not integrated themselves too much into
American society and particularly American universities that are dealing with
Indian or Chicano or Lesbian studies as some kind of attractive gimmicks to
have more students. Note the gay theme is nearly totally absent from this
collection and yet when mentioned like in the first play of the collection it
does not concern Chicanos per se, even if the main part of this first play
happens in Las Vegas which is not exactly Chicano or Indian.
Enjoy
the reading of the reviews as some kind of introduction to that Chicano and
Chicana drama which is anyway essential in American culture today, and not
only, far from it, the United
States
1-
LUIS ALFARO –
STRAIGHT AS A LINE - 2000
2-
COCO FUSCO & NAO BUSTAMANTE – STUFF – 1996
3-
MIGDALIA CRUZ –
FUR, A PLAY IN NINETEEN SCENES – 1995
4-
NILO CRUZ – NIGHT
TRAIN TO BOLINA – 1994
5-
NAOMI IIZUKA – SKIN,
AN ADAPTATION OF BÜCHNER’S WOYZECK – 1995
6-
OLIVER MAYER –
RAGGED TIME – 1994
7-
PEDRO R.
MONGE-RAFULS – TRASH, A MONOLOGUE – 1995
8-
CHERRIE MORAGA
9-
MONICA PALACIOS –
GREETINGS FROM A QUEER SENORITA – 1995
10- CARIDAD SVICH – ALCHEMY OF DESIRE:DEAD-MAN4S BLUES, A
PLAY WITH SONGS – 1994
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 3:53 PM 
