| My dissertation studies the points of contact between theatre and neoliberalism, focusing on the consumption of labor power for the production of commodities. By tracing the mechanisms of capital exchange in the production of three late twentieth- and early twenty-first-centuries South American performances, I claim that, within the social field of theatre, the circular systems of cultural production operate by cannibalistically consuming corporeal labor power. To that end, I propose to place in the theatrical field of production questions rooted in conceptual and material matrices of bodies, work, consumption, exploitation, and violence.;Argentine Griselda Gambaro's Es necesario entender un poco (It is necessary to understand a little, staged in 1995) reveals the cultural, political, and economic negotiations that operated in Argentina in the construction and articulation of Otherness in support of the Menemist government's neoliberal program. Through the lens of Fernando Coronil's theory of Occidentalism, I explore the incorporation of neoliberalism taking place through a complex of legal, economic, and social institutions and praxis.;In my analysis of Argentine playwright, actor, and director Jose Maria Muscari's Shangay te verde en 8 escenas (Shangay: green tea and sushi in eight scenes, performed between 2004 and 2006), I posit a series of biological implications of labor exploitation. By reading Marx in terms of biological consumption, I argue that an examination of the modes of ingestion, consumption, devouring, and physiological expenditure of food operating in and around the performance explicates the incorporation of neoliberalism into the bodies of theatre producers and consumers.;Finally, I study the representation of cannibalism in Brazilian playwright Newton Moreno's A refeicao (The Repast , produced in 2007). In these aberrant actions, the body appears as the material of social struggles. Flesh becomes food in a framework shaped by economies of emotion and empathy. Workers' bodies are at all times fodder for consumption. Thus, in that sense, the play describes more than a metaphor. It illustrates the way cannibalism is the modus operandi of neoliberal economies. |
