Latinx Reception of Greek Tragic Myth: Healing (and) Radical Politics

Acknowledgements

Six years ago, I embarked on a journey of reflections, affections, thought and word experiments through the (border)lands of the U.S. Latinx reception of Greek tragic myth. Having now reached what is perhaps the most important point of the journey, the point where I get to share my doctoral project with the world, I realize that it was not the things I’ve learned but the people I’ve learned them with what made this a thoroughly rewarding experience.

The source of the most valuable rewards out of the many I’ve reaped in the course of this journey is my supervisor, Professor Savas Patsalidis, whose mentorship is only matched by the vastness of his knowledge and understanding of the theatre. His passion was contagious, as was his impeccable work ethics. His guidance, coolness, as well as the solid intellectual and affective ground he provided me throughout made this project possible. No one and nothing can be lost when he is around. I am blessed to have shared this journey with him.

And as if that blessing was not enough, I’ve had the honour and delight of also collaborating closely with Professor Yiorgos Kalogeras, a beacon of wisdom, optimism, and serenity. It is so empowering to have met such a true Teacher whose winning sense of humour, sagacious mind, and generous heart serve as a source of inspiration for everyone around him. He is the one who introduced me to the fascinating field of Latinx studies and the one who showed me how to navigate through it. I will be forever grateful to him for that.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to Professors Yiorgos Anagnostou and Zoe Detsi, who have offered me treasured advice and words of encouragement, and whose trust has made me a better person, as well as to Professor Tatiani Rapatzikou for her kindness and generosity. My heartfelt thanks go to the faculty members as well as the administrative and technical personnel of the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who made me feel at home since the first day I set foot on the School’s grounds.

And a final but very important note: Early versions of parts of this book have been published as follows: “Questing for 21st Century Mestizaje in the Realm of the Greek Tragic Myth: Dramatic Mythic(al) Revisions by Cherríe Moraga, Luis Alfaro, and Caridad Svich” in Mythmaking Across Boundaries (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2016); “Caridad Svich’s Raving Iphigenia as Mythical Celebrity and Female Pharmakos” in National and Transnational Challenges to the American Imaginary (Peter Lang, 2018); “Luis Alfaro’s Chicano Take on Electra: A Barrio-bound Electricidad” in Cultural Palimpsests: Ethnic Watermarks, Surfacing Histories (Routledge, 2019); “‘Brown Medeas’: Reconfiguring Mestizaje for the 21st Century” in Ex-centric Narratives (Issue 2, 2019).

Prolegomena

Mestizx Mythopoesis

I. In Lieu of a Preface

In an interview I conducted with Caridad Svich on June 12, 2014, and, specifically, in responding to an inquiry about the reasons why she chose to engage with Greek tragic myths for her theatre work, the playwright described the process of sustaining a dialogue with the ancient mythical source texts as one of “re-falling in love with” and “wrestling with” them.¹ She also described it as a process involving dramaturgical choices which mix and elbow with the Greek mythical material. It was in this way that Svich concisely articulated the foundations of the practice of creating “dramatic mythic revisions” of ancient Greek tragic myths (Chirico 2008); that is, creative re-writings of these myths that aim at both capturing the myths’ core meanings and critically opening (up) new meanings behind them.² It is a practice that marks not only much of Svich’s post-millennium theatre work, but also some of the contemporary work of other Latinx³ (and Chicanx) theatre practitioners, namely, Carlos Morton, Cherríe Moraga, and Luis Alfaro. Thus, William Garcia’s argument that “the Latin American playwrights have not been oblivious to the rewriting of tragic myths originally elaborated by the Greeks” is corroborated (145), whereas U.S. Latinx-specific dimensions are imparted to it and hitherto underrepresented folds are revealed in it. The present study suggests that this is a practice deserving of our attention mainly for three different, but equally important, reasons.

First, whereas engagement with myth is anything but alien tradition for Latinx artists, engagement with Greek tragic myth to attend to U.S. Latinx realities, especially to the extent that it occurs in the past three decades, signifies a crucial development in the theatre of the Latin American diaspora in the U.S. This is a development in the direction of reaching out and opening up to inter/transcultural flows, or even to “the globalization of Latinidades across the world,” to use Ana Patricia Rodriguez’s resonant phrase (222), and one that occurs in full view of twenty-first-century specificities, challenges, and problematics. The fact that the tragic mode, operative in the Greek myths which are being revised, is seized on and employed as having radical political and therapeutic possibilities points emphatically to the artists’ need to respond with urgency to the present conditions of the world. More than that, though, given the growing demographic significance of the Latinx population, this emerging theatre practice further points to a significant development in the broader American theatrical and cultural landscape which grows increasingly “transnationalized by Latinos/as’ transmigratory presence” (222). The said developments seem to be paradigm-changing, in terms of outreach and influence.

Second, indications and evidence of the beneficial role of this kind of revisionary theatre in the experience of (sociocultural) trauma⁴ and in the practice(s) and process(es) of healing, with regard both to the individual and the collective, such as those that the present study hopes to bring to light, might lead to the adoption of more and more effective institutional policies and other relevant actions on the interface of health/well-being, arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Third, the revisionary theatre work that falls within the purview of this project is conducive to carving out space for the advancement of existing and cultivation of new cross/inter/transcultural bonds between Greek and Latinx culture(s) and the respective diasporic communities in the U.S. and beyond—including collaboration between the fields of Hellenic and Latin/x American Studies.

In what follows, a framework, as comprehensive as possible, is provided within and by means of which a profounder understanding of both the parameters of the said Latinx, Greek-inflected, theatre practice and the reasons for pursuing its close examination can be fathomed.

II. From Pre-colonial Myths to Post-colonial Mitos and Beyond