South America – Females in Theatre and Drama in the 20th and 21st Century
Salvadora Medina Onrubia
Salvadora
Medina Onrubia was an Argentine playwright, poet, narrator, feminist and
storyteller who was born in 1894 in La Plata in Argentina and died in 1972 in
Buenos Aires. From the young age of 15, Onrubia embraced anarchist and feminist
principles and she was a follower of Russian anarchist Simon Radowitzky. Much
of her life and her writings were highly political and she was a regular
contributor to La Nacion, El Hogar,
Critica and Faces and Masks. She
was arrested and imprisoned for many of her publications.
Onrubia’s
dramatic writings were mostly written for children’s and youth theatre. Her
work is often characterized as Thesis Drama since it uses debate and didactic techniques
to further plot through argument. Her female characters both conform with and
contrast tradition representations of females. Her 1914 play Almafuerte (‘Strong Soul’), explores
life in the Buenos Aires’ slums and the way that females can both accept and
question the roles society and circumstances designate them. Public health and
the political aspects of everyday life are strong themes in her work. Although she
only published a small number of plays, her work is significant in its style, content and form.
Born in 1960 Claudia Piñeiro, is an Argentine playwright, novelist, crime write and screenwriter. She initially worked as an accountant before taking to writing. One of her first plays in 2004 was How much a refrigerator is worth. This piece examines domestic life and the stories that lie beneath domestic life. This was followed soon after by The Same Green Tree in 2006. Her later work has been described as dark and absurd in its humour and portrayal of the human condition. These works include Verona (2007), Morite, Fat (2008) and Three Old Pens (2009). As her popularity grew as a crime writer, Piñeiro has written very little work for the theatre.
Claudia Piñeiro
Born in 1960 Claudia Piñeiro, is an Argentine playwright, novelist, crime write and screenwriter. She initially worked as an accountant before taking to writing. One of her first plays in 2004 was How much a refrigerator is worth. This piece examines domestic life and the stories that lie beneath domestic life. This was followed soon after by The Same Green Tree in 2006. Her later work has been described as dark and absurd in its humour and portrayal of the human condition. These works include Verona (2007), Morite, Fat (2008) and Three Old Pens (2009). As her popularity grew as a crime writer, Piñeiro has written very little work for the theatre.
Ana Maria Gonçalves
Born in Ibiá, Minas Gerais in Brazil
in 1970, Goncalves is a Brazilian playwright and screenwriter who has worked in
Brazil and the United States of America. Her plays explore what it is like to
live as a black woman in modern day societies like Brazil where racial and
gender prejudice are prominent.
Her first dramas were written in 2001 and are the
verse dramas Beside You - On the Edge of What You Feel for Me and A Defect of Colour. After working as a lecturer in race relations and also as a writer in residence at Tulane, Stanford and
Middlebury, she returned to São
Paulo in Brazil
and in 2016 she wrote her most famous play Diverse.
The play explores the relationship of a couple João and Márcia and their
efforts to stray away from the prejudices of a racist and sexist society. Fortified
by João (a black 28 year old), Márcia, a 40 years old and of mixed race, slowly
begins to examine and reclaim her black roots. João must re-examine himself and
whether he can cope with and not be intimidated by Márcia’s new sense of
purpose and identity.
Goncalves’ plays and writings have been performed and published in
many languages and many countries including Brazil, Portugal, the United States
of America and Italy.
Cidinha da Silva
Cidinha da Silva is the playwright and novelist
from Brazil. Her play "Got pregnant, gave birth to horses and learned how
to fly without wings" is a strong magic realism and surrealist drama revealing the daily routine of six black
women who live in the same apartment building. They have no interaction nor do
they know each other, however, their similar yearnings reveal the private truth
of buried affections.
Cidinha is a prose writer and playwright from Belo Horizonte, Minas
Gerais. Author of 11 books, she chronicles the lives of adults and writes short stories and
romance for children and adolescents. She organized two fundamental works on
contemporary race relations in Brazil: Affirmative actions in education:
Brazilian experiences (2003) (Ações afirmativas em educação: experiências
brasileiras) and African racial relations: inputs for public policies of books,
reading, literature and libraries in Brazil (2014) (Africanidades e relações
raciais: insumos para políticas públicas na área do livro, leitura, literatura
e bibliotecas no Brasil).
Marcia Zanelatto
Marcia Zanelatto is a Brazilian playwright and screenplay writer. Her most famous play is The Body’s Night. The plot of the play follows Clara and Isabel who are beautiful, young, talented, and in love. But the meaning of life is questioned when one of them is diagnosed with a degenerative disease. With the support of the doctor and friend, Paula, Isabel deals with the reality, finding new limitations of power and courage that she never thought she would have.
Zanelatto lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, where she writes for theatre,
television and cinema, and teaches script writing. Her work often engages with
ideas of racism, public security, and sexual and gender identity. She has
received several awards, including the Brazil at Scene Award 2009 (Prêmio
Brasil em Cena) for the play Time of Solitude (Tempo de Solidão), the Favelas Award from the Ford Foundation for the play They ain’t Got No (Eles não usam tênis naique); and the 2014
Theatre Producers Association of Rio de Janeiro Award (Prêmio APTR) for Best
Author, with the play Frumpiness (Desalinho). In 2016, the Royal Exchange
Theater, Manchester, UK, commissioned a new work for the Birth Festival, which
resulted in her play The Birth Machine. Her work has been translated into
English, Spanish, French and Swedish.
Ana Paula Arendt
Ana Paula Arendt is a Brazilian playwright, screenplay writer, diplomat,
poet and children’s book author who was born in 1980. She often writes under
the pseudonym of R. P. Alencar. Her most famous play is the much awarded The
Constituent which is a verse drama.
Arendt was born in
Rondonia in Brazil. She spent a significant part of her life living in Rio
Branco where she lived with and was heavily influenced by the Indigenous Kaxarari
tribes and clans. She eventually moved to São Paulo, Montevideo, and then Brasilia. Many
of her plays are verse dramas concerned with issues of power, gender and the
environment and much of her poetry is also is also performed. Much of her work
is done in both Portuguese and French. Her plays and performed poetry include The Constituent (2015), Callista (2015),
The Creation of Pindorama (Portuguese, 2015) and The Venerable Virtues of Men (2016).
References for South America – Females in Theatre and Drama in the 20th and 21st Century
Arendt, A.P. (2015). The Constituent. (English Edition). eBook: Ana Paula Arendt.
Retrieved amazon.com 2019-04-20.
Arendt, A.P. (2016). Callista. (English Edition). eBook: Ana Paula Arendt. Retrieved
amazon.com 2018-11-07.
Azougue. (2018). The Truth is a Daughter of the Lie. Azougue Editorial. Brazilian
National Association of Writers. Retrieved April 12, 2019.
Evoé Collective. (2017). Meet the Playwrights of Female Voices from Brazil. Retrieved April 8, 2019 from https://www.evoecollective.com/single-post/2017/10/19/Meet-the-Playwrights-of-Female-Voices-From-Brazil
Farnsworth, M.S. (2017). Sex Work, Sickness, and Suicide: Argentine Feminist Theatre in the
1910s and 1920s. New York: Hemispheric Institute.
Retrieved from
