Transnational Embodiments: Staging the Trope of Transgenerational Transmission in the Theatre of Victoria Szpunberg and Sergio Blanco

Abstract

This article explores the transgenerational transmission of trauma in two transnational playwrights—Catalan-Argentine Victoria Szpunberg and Franco-Uruguayan Sergio Blanco—whose work traverses diverse cultural contexts. By focusing on two radically different contemporary projects, we will reflect critically on the ways in which transgenerational transmission of trauma has been destabilized and critiqued. Both provide substantial evidence of deliberate research, re-writing and engagement with past familial trauma. However, they ultimately treat ‘transgenerational transmission’ as a trope that enables critical reflection on the (im)possibility of apprehending and translating difficult pasts and the marks carried in and by bodies from generation to generation.