CHILDREN ON SCENE. THEATER AND POSTMEMORY IN POSTDICTATORSHIP ARGENTINA

Abstract

For almost two decades, the theater has become an excellent channel for the children of those who disappeared during the last Argentine military dictatorship to articulate their work of mourning and identity search. This explosion of “second generation” theater plays is made concrete in the 2000s, with the birth of the Teatro x la identidad movement. After laying the conceptual foundations of the post-memory and mapping other performative actions carried out by the children, the article focuses on some of the most representative works of Txi: Instrucciones para coleccionistas de mariposas (Mariana Eva Pérez, 2002), Hija de la dictadura militar (Lucila Teste, 2008), La búsqueda (Anabella Valencia, 2005) or Una caja blanca (Andrés Binetti, 2005). Our intention is to establish the ways in which these young dramatists appeal to a traumatic past of which, by age, they do not preserve any memory. In most cases, these are plays whose stories are markedly personal and subjective, if not clearly autobiographical.