The Caravana of Central American Mothers in Mexico: Performances of Devotional and Saintly Motherhood on a Transnational Stage-in-Motion

Like earlier mother activism in Latin America, the annual Caravana de Madres Centroamericanas (Caravan of Central American Mothers) through Mexico strategically activates the traditional archetype of mothers as passive, pious, suffering victims whose self-abnegation forces them, almost against their will, out of their supposedly natural domestic sphere. Three elements, however, distinguish the caravana from earlier protests staged by mothers. First, this protest crosses national borders, functioning as a transnational pilgrimage to the memory of the disappeared relative. This stage-in-motion temporarily spotlights and claims the spaces traversed by undocumented Central American migrants in Mexico, attempting to recast those migrants as victims of violence rather than as criminals. Second, through performances of both devotional motherhood and saintly motherhood, the caravana's mother-based activism de-normalizes violence related to drugs and migration. Third, performances of family reunification staged by the caravana organizers take place in the few cases in which they manage to locate family members who have not fallen prey to violence but have simply resettled in Mexico and abandoned or lost touch with families left behind in Central America. These performances of family reunification serve important functions: they shift the performance of motherhood from devotion to saintly tolerance, patience and forgiveness – even toward prodigal offspring who were ‘lost’ for years; they provide a chance for other mothers to vicariously feel joy and hope that their children are still alive; they exemplify world citizens challenging incompetent or indifferent nation state authorities; and they enact a symbolic unification of Central America and Mexico in defiance of contemporary nation state borders.

Black Theatricalities in Revisiting History for the Present

This article seeks to reflect on how theatre presents itself as a fabular medium allowing for the emergence of performances that create and re-create stories and identities. In particular, it examines how theatre allows for the development of epistemologies that enhance our understanding of black bodies, knowledge, traditions, subjectivities and desires.

Bulbs Onstage: Theatrical Hygiene and the Electrification of Performance

European theatres were electrified between 1883 and 1913. This process has traditionally been associated with the advent of modernist theatre, but the details have rarely been examined, nor has the scope of the process's social and technological impacts been analysed. Reconstructing light bulbs’ early appearances in theatrical practice and discourse, this article traces the intricate entanglement between the electrical industry and theatrical culture around the turn of the century and highlights electricity's entanglement with concepts of hygiene and healing. Discussing an early light bulb in use in Bayreuth in 1882, the marketing strategies of the German Edison Company and Adolphe Appia's early manifesto, the article shows how electrification of theatres was shaped by competing visions of a future theatre. Also it demonstrates that aesthetics, technology and politics were intricately entangled in this process. Refuting teleological narratives of aesthetic progress, the paper proposes reframing modernist theatre's artistic autonomy as dependent on its embeddedness within the technologies of modernity.

Dossier – Fighting Back: Contemporary Theatre in Brazil: Introduction

This text introduces our dossier on contemporary theatre in Brazil, highlighting the ways it fights back against social and political injustice.

‘Burn the Witch’: Decadence and the Occult in Contemporary Feminist Performance

This article introduces and theorizes ‘decadence’ as a key feature of Lauren Barri Holstein's performance Notorious (2017). The decadence of Holstein's work is approached in light of two main considerations: the spectacular presentation of witchcraft as an occult practice, and what Holstein ‘does’ with the staging of witches and witchcraft. Situated in light of performances associated with the neo-occult revival (Ivy Monteiro and Jex Blackmore), and a recent strand of feminist performance that revels in an aesthetics of trash, mess and excess (Ann Liv Young and Lucy McCormick), the article offers a close critical analysis of Notorious as a work that addresses and seeks to subvert gendered inequalities and forms of productivity in twenty-first-century capitalism. I argue that Holstein's overidentification with exertion and exhaustion as much as the subversive potentialities of witchcraft results in a decadent aesthetic, that her staging of the witch as a persecuted but powerful emblem of the occult sheds valuable light on the aesthetics and politics of decadence in performance, and that the subversive qualities of decadence emerge particularly strongly in its ‘doing’ as an embodied and enacted practice.