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seminar

Spring 2012

Course #908

Marin Laufenberg

The images that I’ve selected to represent my final project, are three stills from Laura Yusem’s 1986 production of Antigona furiosa. It was difficult to find video or snapshots from productions, but I think the three I’ve selected represent key aspects of my final paper very well. The images come from Diana Taylor’s book Disappearing Acts. One represents the two buffoons, Antinoo and Corifeo as they represent the ‘inner-spectators’, or watchers of trauma that mock, make light of, and create black humor in a space of trauma. They are seated at a cafe table, an activity common to Buenos Aires, representing every-day citizens that are complicit with violence or who simply don’t question or speak out against violence in the years following the fall of dictatorship. Another image shows the interaction between Antigona, Corifeo and Antinoo, and the audience. We see Antigona inside her floor-to-ceiling cage in the center of the stage, eternally trapped inside her own suffering, while Antinoo and Corifeo mock her from outside the cage but are still on stage, and finally, we can see how the audience surrounds the center stage area, fulfilling the role of complicit spectators as well. The final image shows with dramatic lighting, Antigona hung. The intriguing thing about this shot is that it is either the very beginning or very end of the play, but specifically which one it is we cannot know because the play both starts and ends with her hung, dead. This highlights the cyclical, nature of the performance, and the endless, continuous nature of this trauma. While it would have been ideal to include some images of Realidad nacional desde la cama as well, it is not a play, like Antigona furiosa, and therefore has not been produced on stage to my knowledge. Although the reading of this novel leaves me with strong mental images that could have worked well to illustrate the topic of humor in my final project, unfortunately, these are images that as of now, do not exist.

© 2023 by Laurie Beth Clark

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