Staging Migrant Identity in Spanish Contemporary Theatre: Cultural Reconstruction from Aesthetic Drama towards Social Ritual

Abstract

This study analyses theatre representation of both immigrant and host identity in contemporary Spanish culture. It focuses on Spanish plays published and performed at the turn of this century, from the late 1990s to the first two decades of the 21st century. During that period we can observe important changes regarding the stereotypical image of cross-cultured otherness as opposed to the entrenched belonging of the host identity. Firstly, the dominant discourse of national narrative is questioned from the post-national perspective as a cultural construction of the imagined community. Within that paradigm, the stabile pattern of the host identity with clearly defined parameters progressively transforms into a more flexible concept of hybrid culture as a direct consequence of global world dynamics. In addition, the concept of the border as a line that separates and breaks the homogeneity of migrant history is transformed into the symbol of a contact zone and a dynamic social element in constant movement across ethnicities, genders, races and classes. This modification of the representational pattern can be observed across several generations of Spanish playwrights; beginning with Ignacio del Moral, José Sanchis Sinisterra, Juan Mayorga, Fermín Cabal, Paloma Pedrero and Yolanda Pallín among many others, followed by younger authors such as Jesús Laiz, José Cruz, Mahor Galilea Pascual, Malco Arija Martínez, Sara Rosenberg and others. The staging and practice of the forum theatre allows us to experience otherness in the process of dramatic creation. The aesthetic act opens a liminal space for real social interaction capable of solving cultural trauma within the collective ritual practice. The staging of these works shows a tendency towards reshaping the binary immigrant-native construction by creating a collective work of art as part of the global transcultural heritage.