In Negotiating Performance, major scholars and practitioners of the theatrical arts consider the diversity of Latin American and U. S. Latino performance: indigenous theater, performance art, living installations, carnival, public demonstrations, and gender acts such as transvestism. By redefining performance to include such events as Mayan and AIDS theater, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and Argentinean drag culture, this energetic volume discusses the dynamics of Latino/a identity politics and the sometimes discordant intersection of gender, sexuality, and nationalisms.
The...

In "Disappearing Acts," Diana Taylor looks at how national identity is shaped, gendered, and contested through spectacle and spectatorship. The specific identity in question is that of Argentina, and Taylor s focus is directed toward the years 1976 to 1983 in which the Argentine armed forces were pitted against the Argentine people in that nation s "Dirty War." Combining feminism, cultural studies, and performance theory, Taylor analyzes the political spectacles that comprised the war concentration camps, torture, "disappearances" as well as the rise of theatrical productions, demonstrations,...