“In this book, McCleary deftly reconstructs the golden age of Buenos Aires theater, shedding light on the lively world of playwriters, actors, audiences, impresarios, and critics. She shows that popular notions of race, gender, class, and nation emerged and evolved in the dialogue between stage and house. Between ovations and flops, the reader will get a taste of how democratic entertainment used to be before the mechanical reproduction of art cornered stage performances into an elite pastime.”
—Oscar Chamosa, University of Georgia
“Staging Buenos Aires is a well-researched interdisciplinary work that rigorously examines the multiple facets of urban theater, including popular and middle-class plays, space/place of the theater, audiences, and fire safety. With an impressive bibliography, painstaking research of rare materials and ‘forgotten histories,’ this book is a must-read for scholars, graduate and advanced undergraduate students of Latin American studies, urban studies, performance studies, and theater historians.”
—Yovanna Pineda, University of Central Florida