Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-2001

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Modern Foreign Languages

Major Professor

Oscar Rivera-Rodas

Abstract

With this study, the application of metatheater is analyzed in three plays by Guillermo Schmidhuber—Obituario, El armario de las abuelas, and La secreta amistad de Juana y Dorotea. The structures and contexts of the dramatic representations within these plays are examined by employing concepts of metatheater derived from those of Lionel Abel, Richard Hornby, Patrice Pavis, and Oscar Rivera-Rodas. The term "metatheater" refers to a play that has a structural system with more than one plane of fiction. The metatheatrical play contains elements of costume, stage set, and characters that contribute to the creation of these multiple planes. The application of metatheater extends the reach of these plays to multiple temporal and spacial planes, which are visually and auditively represented in the stage directions and scripts written by the playwright. All of these elements are combined in these three plays to form the reflective pieces that explore the themes of the condition of woman and theater itself. Though the act of reflection is not new to theater, the novelty here consists of the technique of metatheater applied to represent this state of thought. It is found that Schmidhuber can be identified as a contributor to the progress of theater in Latin America during the last decades of the twentieth century through his employment of metatheatrical elements of structure and representation in the plays included in this analysis.

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