David Wiles discusses the state of theatre history and the status of the theatre historian according to the voices of academics working on and in the Western tradition. In this article I intend to briefly contribute to those debates with reflections on how we make theatre history, and what we are working on, in the Latin American academy today.

First of all, I cannot avoid calling attention to the persistent topic of the denomination ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ countries. I will not rehearse the arguments of Edward Said here, but I do need to set out that I will refer to Latin America as an object of reflection. Thinking of Latin America already involves some problems in itself, and we cannot dwell on them all now either. Our societies have geopolitical, cultural and even linguistic elements as much in common as different. When trying to focus on the common issues we run the risk of generalizing or distorting the specificities. In fact, from a Latin American perspective we can say that it can be better defined by the diversity (structural, historical, cultural and so on) than by the ideal common identity. But at the same time it is possible to focus on some common elements that construct a Latin American perspective: a specific local zeitgeist, related to our shared relationship with Western countries. And that is the point of view I take in this article.

Wiles's first issue is related to the question of ‘what it means to be a theatre historian in the present academic environment’ in Western countries. Following this, we may ask what it means to be a theatre historian in the current Latin American academic environment. Even before addressing that question, however, it is necessary to ask the question, to what extent do we academics even consider ourselves ‘theatre historians’?

Especially in recent years, transdisciplinarity has led to the interweaving of theoretical frameworks, analytical tools and even objects of study. So while our predecessors perceived themselves in the relatively clearly established areas of history and theatre, today we instead perceive ourselves navigating the in-between spaces of the social sciences, the humanities and the artistic studies. On the other hand, when we say ‘history’ in the field of artistic studies among middle-aged Latin American scholars, we all assume that we are dealing with ‘recent history’.Footnote ¹ Also, in the same way, ‘theatre’ is taken to include all the arts associated with the body onstage, including traditional theatre, performances and interdisciplinary practices involving dance, visual arts or music, and artivism and public interventions.

The links between practice and research are one of the current problems for academic researchers, including historians, because they involve the relationship of the researcher with their environment, with their readers, and with those students who will construct the future theatre. Among the most topical questions, we ask, what are the limits of conceiving the creative process as a way of research, and using academic criteria to validate creative outputs? The energy and the affection of academics (even theatre historians) are directly involved with the interests of creators. For instance, last October I attended an international meeting at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago de Chile, where researchers (including theatre historians) and artists discussed memory, archives, theatre history and experiences of public intervention in our cities. Artists and researchers are frequently interested in similar issues and the dialogue among them builds bridges between practice and theory that improves knowledge and action in new creative ways.

Wiles refers to the ways of naming our elusive object of study in different languages. He mentions English, German and French. I'd like to include Spanish in this list. The English theatre, the German Theater and the French arts du spectacle advantage and disadvantage certain forms of theatrical work, while the Spanish term artes escénicas has consensus in the academic field as referring to a practice that exceeds the idea of traditional theatre.

However, as Wiles notes, ‘The brand is a problem.’ Despite the scope of transdisciplinarity, the historian's brand is still a problem, not only for theatre history but also for theatre studies, and even for the humanities and social sciences in our academy, because within universities and research centres we respond to the parameters of the hard sciences. Moreover, as the author points out for European and North American theatre, ‘This problem reflects the pressure of market forces.’ In the current Latin American context, and explicitly in the Southern Cone, neo-liberalism is imposing mechanisms tending towards the privatization of the production of knowledge. The twenty-first century began with progressive policies that managed to direct lines of subsidies, scholarships, research programmes, repatriation of researchers, the formation of international networks and so on. But now all of them are being removed, one by one. National budgets for research are reduced year after year in large percentages and the strategic research topics promoted by official policies are closely linked to business interests.

For this reason, young researchers who intend to enter the academy in any area of the social or humanistic sciences must choose their study subjects tactically, especially if they aspire to develop studies related to art. Currently, in the Southern Cone, these problems are ahead of all discussions in the academy, among both junior and senior researchers. For example, in Argentina, where the fourth year of a neo-liberal government is beginning, the de-financing of the scientific and university systems is destroying work teams and leading to emigration by junior researchers.

Although the countries of Latin America share common ground due to their colonial foundation – for which there have been endless debates about a shared history and a continental identity – the national specificities are equally important. Twentieth-century theatre historians were concerned with writing the history of each national theatre. Hand in hand with globalization and transculturation, perhaps the task of twenty-first-century researchers is to construct cross-sectional histories, as plural as America, open and uncomfortable.

In this sense, the problems surrounding the archive are central. The archive is a crucial meeting point in relations between the academy and artists. Encounters that involve theatrical agents of different types are developing. Within the framework of the Grupo de Estudios sobre Teatro Contemporáneo, política y sociedad en América Latina, which I coordinate at the Gino Germani Research Institute (School of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires), this year we will begin a Fondo Documental: Teatro y Política en América Latina (Documentary Fund for Theatre and Politics in Latin America), which will be founded in the Audiovisual Archive of the institute's Documentation Center. The project grew out of work with colleagues from neighbouring countries, dedicated to the study of the performing arts in their relations with politics in recent history. Throughout our work as researchers from different universities in the Southern Cone, we have verified the existence of a vast number of documentary collections generated by artistic creation and academic research. In most of the countries of the Southern Cone, there are no updated, accessible and digital documentary collections that specialize in the relationship between performing arts and politics in the last decades. So we believe that a fund of this type is essential not only for the future of theatre but also for the construction and preservation of regional cultural history.

In this brief overview, I have proposed to present some of the problems of theatre studies in Latin America. Those problems could be synthesized in the blurring of disciplinary boundaries, regarding both academic disciplines and the relationships between research and artistic practice. The possibility of navigating between history, sociology, philosophy, political science and other ways of approaching the theatrical phenomenon gives us tremendous methodological and theoretical responsibility. The old theoretical frameworks or methodological designs that we have learned are no longer sufficient to face our changing objects of study. We must design appropriate methodologies and draw on diverse sources to be up to the requirements of ‘theatre studies’.

Our countries, on the other hand, have regrettable official policies in common. We work every day despite them, to heal the cultural wounds with sheer will and the redoubling of efforts.