Yes, and. . .

Abstract

Yes, and . . . Stuart A. Day I have just inherited two important historical testimonials: a complete collection of the Latin American Theatre Review and a short but equally intriguing bibliography entitled "Studies on the Latin American Theatre, 1960-1969" by Leon F. Lyday and George W. Woodyard. My benefactor and dear friend, María A. Salgado, helped me to cart these documents to my office as she cleared out after more than three decades of teaching and research at UNC-Chapel Hill. She witnessed the first group of women graduate here with four-year degrees in 1967; she paved the way for women professors at our institution; and she is one of many people who made it unnecessary to answer the question Lyday and Woodyard cite, and hope to render obsolete, in the introduction to their above-mentioned bibliography printed in Theatre Documentation, II (1969-1970): "Does any theatre really exist in Latin America?" I did not have to answer this question when I presented my dissertation prospectus on Mexican political theatre. Nor did I have to answer it when I went into the job market. And I will not have to answer it next year when I turn in my tenure dossier. I will never have to do so, precisely because others have created space (in classrooms, on MA reading lists, in libraries, at conferences) in which we can perform our desire. Our field, in the end, is exemplified by the people—authors, teachers, students, critics, performers—who have made it possible to make a living out of that which we love. The collection of texts that we study and produce is somehow secondary, skeletal compared to the living stages of our profession, compared to the flesh and blood of the myriad mentors of the field who have made it acceptable to study Latin American theatre. Despite my acknowledgment of those who have come before, I lack the historical distance, not to mention the practical experience, to comment on how the field of Latin American theatre studies will evolve; I can only write about how I have been involved. My role, of course, is minor. Yet, perhaps there is a correlation between my experiences in a literature department and a more universal tension that is building as cultural and performance studies continue to work their way into the imagination of literary criticism. I wrote my first (and only) book on Mexican theatre. It is a piece of literary criticism grounded in literary theory, history, and economics. This manuscript came out of what had been, in many ways, a safe dissertation project; it paralleled the work that is expected, if not demanded, in many literature departments, and while it was informed by live plays, there was always a printed text to which I could turn, an academic touchstone that guaranteed a stamp of approval. It begged no questions of legitimacy, and elicited no disapproving frowns when I went into the job market. Conversely, I am increasingly aware that my next project will, in some quarters, educe a new question, the question that now faces many of us who work in literature departments: "What does your work have to do with literature?" Specifically, I am writing a manuscript on Mexican performance (covering everything from the Zapatista leader Comandante Ester taking the stage in the Mexican Congress to street demonstrations protesting the hundreds of brutal murders in Ciudad Juárez) that stretches what I consider to be the boundaries of literary criticism. I will, of course, include some plays in this study; however, many of the themes I [End Page 462] pursue will be fleeting, out of reach for those who consider studying life as performance to be alien, extradepartmental territory. Despite a growing interdisciplinary openness, there is no dearth of remarks questioning the validity, or the so-called proper place, of research that is not related to the written, preferably fictitious, word. Regardless of the challenges to what it is I do, or to what I'm trying to do, I know that the barriers I face pale in comparison to those faced by the people who established the field of Latin American theatre. Perhaps, though, the same spirit of the scholars...