204 LATINAMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW is incomplete unless it marries this consideration of technique with a thorough historical understanding of the work in question and the context of its creation. The inclusion in the volume of essays treating the techniques and contributions of actors – among them Margarita Xirgu, Irene López Heredia, Enrique Santos Discépolo, María Podestá, Pablo Podestá, and Eleonora Duse – facilitates the connections among theory, practice and history emphasized by De Marinis. In “Teatro, diálogo y silencios: El dolor de las palabras,” María Esther Badin eloquently discusses Eleonora Duse’s conflicted relationship with words, which the actor herself describes in her personal correspondence. Duse rejected traditional rhetorical conventions, choosing instead to obligate each word to “nacer de nuevo” through speech, silences and gesture. This technique forced her to grapple with the limitations of language, a process that ultimately resulted in critical acclaim for her interpretations. Finally, the volume’s critical analyses of texts and performances treat the works of playwrights from both Spain – Rojas Zorrilla and Sanchis Sinisterra, for example – and Latin America – Rafuls; Rosencof; Conteris; Escalante; Pavlovsky; and Spregelburd, among others. Jorge Dubatti’s essay “Relectura de Flores de papel: dramaturgia vertical y producción de sentido político” is representative of those studies that offer a new reading of canonical texts. Dubatti rejects previous interpretations of Flores de papel as an essentially absurdist work. Although he concedes that El Merluza lacks referential qualities typical in traditional realism, he argues that the piece ultimately cannot be classified as absurdist, given its situated nature vis-à-vis the socio-historical context of Chile. Instead, Dubatti posits that Wolff’s work offers a dramatic metaphor of a realistic situation: the violence underlying the relationship between Eva and El Merluza, which in turn represents the socio-economic and political tensions present in Chile at the time the work was written. Dubatti then goes on to conceive of Flores de papel as an example of “realismo vertical,” a concept elaborated by Wolff in which a realistic situation is condensed into a metaphor, thereby eliminating the justification of cause-effect relationships in the dramatic action. To conclude, this volume offers a valuable contribution to the field of Hispanic theatre and, true to the goals of GETEA, will be particularly useful to both practitioners and scholars who wish to expand their respective fields of reference. Ariel Strichartz St. Olaf College Reverte Bernal, Concepción. Teatro y vanguardia en hispanoamérica. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2006. 192 p. The considerable amount of critical attention to the poetry and narrative of writers like Vicente Huidobro, César Vallejo and Miguel ÁngelAsturias has eclipsed FALL2007 205 their less investigated dramatic works. Concepción Reverte Bernal’s study of plays by these and additional writers builds on a growing body of criticism on Spanish American vanguardist theatre. This book’s strength lies in its comparative and interdisciplinary nature, as the critic is keenly attentive to considering each play within the framework of not only its author’s life and larger body of work, but also international artistic tendencies. While offering astute commentaries, however, the chapters assembled in the book do not coalesce around an overarching critical position, and a guiding thesis is not clearly articulated from the start of some of them.At times, lengthy direct citations of previous critics also detract from Reverte Bernal’s original insight; she diminishes her own critical voice, for example, by ending two chapters with prolonged excerpts from other scholars. These statements aside, the author’s exhaustive research has generated perceptive readings of the plays and their contexts, and scholars will appreciate the extensive bibliographies that accompany each chapter. The introduction lays the groundwork for the book’s focus on dramatic texts written from the 1920s to the 1940s with a useful summary of general movements (vis-à-vis international avant-garde tendencies), key works and important critical assessments of Spanish American literary vanguardism. The chapter ends with an apt consideration of the relevance of vanguardist drama – and Reverte Bernal’s study – to contemporary questions, such as how to create an intellectual and experimental theatre with wide appeal and the role of theatre amid increasingly mimetic technologies. The second chapter examines...