PAOLA S. HERNÁNDEZ is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and in the Interdisciplinary Theater Studies program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is also director of the Center for Visual Cultures. She is the author of El teatro de Argentina y Chile: Globalización, resistencia y desencanto and the coeditor of two volumes, Imagining Human Rights in the Twenty‑First Century Theater: Global Perspectives and Biodrama: Proyecto Archivos; Seis documentales escénicos.  

“In Staging Lives in Latin American Theater Paola S. Hernández offers a remarkable account of the emergence of new documentary theater in Latin America. Through meticulous analysis of object-props, autobiographical performance, and reenactment practices, Hernández shows how archives come to life onstage and participate in reshaping notions of the self and the real. Staging Lives in Latin American Theater is an essential read for understanding how documentary theater contributes to redefining the archive and related concepts of truth-telling, testimony, and evidence in Latin America.” —Brenda Werth, author of Theatre, Performance and Memory Politics in Argentina— -

“Staging Lives in Latin American Theater is a major contribution to the fields of Latin American theater and performance studies. Hernández offers a theoretically sophisticated and eminently readable analysis of how the theater of the ‘real’ comes to embody a broad range of aesthetic positions within the liminal space of fact and fiction. In each of the cases, the playwrights and performance artists mobilize the archive to flip accepted social norms and values around the concepts of truth and authenticity . . . Hernández’s theoretical range is remarkable.” —Analola Santana, author of Freak Performances: Dissidence in Latin American Theater
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“A welcome, timely, and significant contribution to Latin American theater and performance studies, Staging Lives in Latin American Theater offers meticulously researched case studies of recent projects from Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, whose practitioners variously ‘kidnap reality,’ consider actors ‘stunt doubles of their own lives,’ self-consciously ‘manipulate’ the onstage role of the real, and employ theater as ‘evidentiary forum’ within the larger public arena. In this accomplished study, Paola S. Hernández encourages readers to reconsider the broader relationship between the effective and the affective, ultimately and importantly prodding us to complicate, question, and expand our own notions of the myriad roles documents—and the ‘authentic’—play in documentary theater produced in this hemisphere and across the globe." —Jean Graham-Jones, editor of Lola Arias: Re-enacting Life and author of Evita, Inevitably: Performing Argentina's Female Icons Before and After Eva Perón

“Staging Lives in Latin American Theater is a brilliant study of what it means to bring (auto)biographical stories to the stage in a way that navigates fact and fiction, creating affective bonds. Audiences experience personal stories in a way that allows a profound connection to and reassessment of the past. Hernández at once affirms and rewrites Latin American (theater) history, mirroring the outstanding performances she analyzes.” —Stuart A. Day, author of Outside Theater: Alliances That Shape Mexico
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