“Ladies and gentlemen: Admission is free today, for adults. If you’ve already entered, you can’t repent. The cost is already incurred. Better to enjoy yourself. No one under eighteen will be admitted. Or under thirty-five or over thirty-six. Everyone else can attend with no problem. No obscenity or strong words. The play speaks to our way of life: Argentine, Western, and Christian. We are in 1971. I ask that you stay together and remain silent. Careful on the stairs.”
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Transcript
“Ladies and gentlemen: Admission is free today, for
adults. If you’ve already entered, you can’t repent. The cost is already incurred. Better to enjoy yourself. No one under eighteen will be admitted. Or
under thirty-five or over thirty-six. Everyone else can attend with no problem. No obscenity
or strong words. The play speaks to our way of life: Argentine, Western, and
Christian. We are in 1971. I ask that you stay together and
“Information for Foreigners”• Written 1973• The play is 20 scenes and is supposed to take place in a
large house. • Play shows state of terror, blends onstage and backstage
action to fully expose workings of a state of terror• She incorporates many cultural references into her play to
strengthen it. • Gambaro uses the participatory aspect of theatre to
illustrate her point of people not taking responsibility for their actions and to show how terror regimes use the theatre of terror so that people dissociate the regimes actions with reality
Some Quotes…• “The play speaks to our way of life: Argentine, Western, and Christian. We are in 1971. I ask
that you stay together and remain silent.”
• “Theatre imitates life/If you don’t clap/ It means that life is rotten to the core/ And we may as well just head for the door. / Who once said: Here are the
ken/ of men and women/ here are the bounds?”
• These two quotes show how Gambaro is making the audience question their blind submission to authority.
Where do her plays take place?-The political repression of the 1960s in Argentina gave way to state terrorism in the 1970s - especially the “Dirty War” (1976-1983)-in which military government systematically imprisoned and/or murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians, “the disappeared”
The Dirty War• 1976 - 1983 (7 years)• Argentine government
against suspected dissidents and subversives
• innocent people, "disappeared" in the middle of the night
• tortured and eventually killed
• death of the controversial President Juan Peron in 1974, his wife & vice president, Isabel Peron, assumed power
• This military junta maintained its grip on power by cracking down on anybody whom they believed was challenging their authority
• Causalities between 10000-30000
• War with England brought this regime to an end
• Ended December 10, 1983• Raul Alfonsin's civilian
government took power
A former illegal detention center in the headquarters of the provincial police
of Santa Fe, now a memorial
Memorial to the Dirty War in a park in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Poster by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo NGO with photos of the disappeared
Aspect of the Play… Environmental Theater
• Commonly used in the late 1960s to describe performances that encompass the whole theatre environment making no distinctions between the playing area and the audience.
• The environment for this piece is: an old house or warehouse, with multiple rooms, a staircase and various forms of lighting
• Plot: the audience is split, and then led by a personal tour-
guide. Creating confusion during overlaps and confined space.- In each room a different plot unfolds- Each story line is based on news paper clips taken from Argentinean society in 1971.
Why did she write this play?• Gambaro wanted to make those
outside of the country’s walls aware of what was going on within.
• The script is filled with cultural codes, defined in the footnotes, due to censorship during this time period
• She has described the piece as “a guided tour at the real pace of repression and indignity.”
- The play is written during an “era of government-sponsored terrorism”. Which attacked those who were involved in actions that were deemed subversive, but also were on the grounds of kidnapping, torture and death.
Discussion Questions
When witnessing a crime if a bystander does nothing, does that make them guilty?
Do you believe making the audience participate, and think, adds to a play or takes away from it?
Would you be uncomfortable seeing a play dealing with uncomfortable issues, such a suicide, masturbation, torture and abduction? Does this make you aware of issues or would you rather not watch it?
Rebecca Graper, Ryan MacDonald, Owen Hurst
The What? Yes Men? Huh?• Two prominent members of the Yes Men
are Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos.• Servin is a respected author of “experimental
fiction”, while Vamos is a professor of media arts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York
• use a number of aliases while practicing “identity correction”
• the Yes Men is comprised of a group of anonymous individuals worldwide
What do they do?• Practice what they call Identity
Correction. • done by imitating executives of
powerful organizations, “who put profits ahead of everything else.”
• often disguise themselves executives at conferences, and propose ridiculous ideas.
EXAMPLES• in the Exxon Mobile case, they
proposed that human corpses are used to generate oil
• at the WTO they have suggested slavery and recycling human feces in order to solve world hunger.