Acts of Memory as Expressions of Theatricality

Abstract

The study of theatricality, promoted by Juan Villegas and other theorists, under the assumption that theatre is fundamentally a cultural and social practice, can be a valuable point of view to approach some events in our culture and try to reveal strategies of their organizers in order to achieve performative effectiveness in their respective societies. For this, different memory acts in Chile and Uruguay are approached here as expressions of theatricality. These acts also create and re-link social ties, and construct community. Different examples of these expressions are presented here, to share certain conclusions, less emphatic than this word. In them, the performative efficacy —which can be summarized, in part, through some verbs, such as: participate,

relate, look, shout, appreciate, transmit, symbolize, humanize, celebrate— is possible, to a great

extent, thanks to a series of characteristics that memories and theatricality expressions share.