Performance, theatricality, and corporalities in dispute. Performances of identity among immigrant youth in Buenos Aires

SANTIAGO CANEVARO

E-misférica. Performance y política en las Américas.

Instituto Hemsiférico de Performance y Política, Universidad de Nueva York

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2006

1554-3706

This work aims to analyze experiences of embodied reflevity among participants in a theater improvisation workshop that was carried out with a group of young Peruvians in Buenos Aires. It argues that these kinds of environments offer an important, little-explored space for understanding the real meaning of Peruvian immigrant culture in the specific context of Argentine migration. As Grimson suggests, processes of symbolic interaction offer a means of analyzing the practices, oppositions, and structures of signification that Peruvian immigrants establish with different national, social and cultural groups (Grimson 1999:35). The situations that arose during the improvisation workshop will be considered as contexts in which intercultural codes were manifested. On the other hand, this environment can also serve to examine tensions between two groups that generate different forms of identification and, consequently, construct communicative codes that overlap with distinct modes of positioning themselves in society. These forms of identification interact and communicate, generating conflicts, negotiations, agreements and innumerable “misunderstandings” (Grimson 1999:35).