Choteo Cubano: Humor as a Critical Tool in Twentieth-Century Cuban Theater

This project analyzes the incorporation of choteo in specific Cuban theater texts written during three distinct periods in twentieth-century Cuban history, all of which coincide with specific moments of social, political, and/or economic unrest or transition. Choteo in the theater has served as a tool to demonstrate discontent and frustration with authority figures in various contexts. As that need has altered over time, so too has the approach that playwrights have taken to speak out about these issues. I suggest that by responding to changing circumstances with choteo, confronting a difficult situation is more palatable to audiences or readers than using a more serious approach. I investigate humor theories from Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, and Peter McGraw, along with analyses of choteo by Jorge Mañach, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, and Narciso Hidalgo, to consider how and why choteo is used, and the effects of its use. I put forth a definition of choteo that suits its application in literary texts, and I demonstrate that choteo in the theater exists in various forms. While this is not an exhaustive study of choteo in the theater, a close reading of the selected plays provides various examples of the ways in which choteo has been applied in theatrical texts in order to express discontent with specific situations. Chapter one examines the years following Machado’s dictatorship and investigates the uses of choteo directed at social classes and social changes related to race, gender, and class. The three plays selected from this period are Y quiso más la vida (1934), by José Cid Pérez, Junto al río (1938), by Luis Baralt, and El velorio de Pura (1941), by Flora Díaz Parrado. Chapter two analyzes the use of choteo to discuss political unrest during the early years of Castro’s Revolution and the texts from these years demonstrate a lack of change and a fear of repetition of previous political situations in the country. The plays from this period include El flaco y el gordo (1959), by Virgilio Piñera, La paz en el sombrero (1961), by Gloria Parrado, and La muerte del Ñeque (1963), by José Triana. Chapter three considers choteo in the theater during the Special Period and reflects the economic experiences of Cuban society at that moment. Due to their specific socio-economic foci, I have elected to analyze Manteca (1993), by Alberto Pedro Torriente, Laberinto de lobos (1994), by Miguel Terry, and Vereda tropical (1994), by Joaquín Miguel Cuartas Rodríguez. I aim to demonstrate that choteo in the theater, specifically that used in plays written during moments of great change in twentieth-century Cuba, serves a greater purpose than simply making the spectator or reader laugh. It is my intention not only to discuss the myriad examples of choteo in certain Cuban plays, but also to explain its function in these works. While choteo has not necessarily brought about direct or immediate cultural shifts, I believe that it has the potential to aid in the ever-transforming face of Cuban society. Whether it serves as a mere form of temporary escapism, as a means to openly effect change, or something in between, choteo plays a significant role in both mirroring and influencing Cuban society

Cuban Routes of Avant-Garde Theatre: Havana, New York, Miami, 1965-1991.

My dissertation interrogates how the movement of artists between Havana, New York, and Miami shaped experimental theatre aesthetics, formed a shared discourse of theatrical thought, and introduced a particular vein of experimental practices into U.S. American avant-garde theatre, especially as it intersects with U.S. Latina/o theatre and LGBTQ theatre. I interrogate the theatre history of these three cities as horizontal and contiguous, challenging historical narratives of U.S. American neocolonial dominance and superiority, as well as narratives of diaspora that position Havana as an authentic origin. The central contribution of my dissertation is to synthesize the archival evidence that documents connections between the theatre scenes of these three cities, while repositioning well-known artists like Obie Award-winning author and director, María Irene Fornés and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and director Nilo Cruz within the avant-garde traditions touching Greater Cuba (Cuba and its diasporas). By doing so, this study addresses the absence of scholarship in English-language U.S. American Theatre Studies that discusses Latin American and U.S. Latina/o theatre as cutting-edge and artistically innovative vis-à-vis global and Western theatre movements. Each chapter in my dissertation follows a distinct aesthetic movement or theatrical phenomenon, arguing that each approach experimented with feeling Cuban in a unique way. Artists thrust Cuban being upon a stage where it was affectively transferred across difference to also become something beyond the reaches of the island and the diaspora. Avant-garde theatre gave these artists a potent set of tools to deterritorialize the stories, tropes, motifs, symbols, aesthetics, and performance practices associated with an extremely nationalistic theatrical tradition. Through avant-garde theatre, these theatre artists moved experiences particular to Greater Cuba into the realm of the universal human experience. Cuban avant-garde practice Cubanizes the universal through its ways of reinterpreting modernisms and universalizes the Cuban by moving its perspective—its way of looking at the world—to the center. The act of positioning a Havana-Cuban, Miami-Cuban, or New York-Cuban expression as the voice of the universal” human experience is a political act to assert citizenship in and belonging to the Western (U.S. American and European) dominated discourse of the humanities