An approach to female dramatic writing in Argentina: the affirmation of a own view

Abstract

This article proposes an approximation of the dramatic writing produced by women in Argentina between the sixties and nineties in order to find out how a critical look is configured from gender, an autonomous female discourse. In view of this, we mean some paradigmatic playwrights -Griselda Gambaro, Aída Bortnik, Susana Torres Molina, Cristina Escofet and Diana Raznovich - who, from various poetics, aesthetic and ideological interests, contributed to the representation and self-representation of women as a plural subject, crossed and inhabited by a complexity of voices and personal, social, generic, cultural inscriptions. For the description and analysis of the most representative dramatic pieces in this regard we start from a historicalist perspective that takes into account both the social historical context and the dynamics of Argentine theatre. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a notable limitation of women's presence in the national theatrical field, not only in terms of playwrights and directors, but also within theatrical management, critical reception and theatrical juries. Undoubtedly the convulsed political-social context hindered the emergence and the development of a theatre proper feminine until the advent of democracy, when they start to treat social facts taking into account the generic differences that go through them. Finally, we note that, directly addressing gender issues or mobilized by the urgencies of a society in crisis, with the intention of outshooting possible responses or simply raising questions, the authors we refer to seek to move away from stereotypes and archetypal models, to challenge narratives, to break the silent mandates imposed by dictatorships or patriarchal society.