Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico

This book proposes the innovative concept of palimpsest bodies to interpret provocative theatre and performance experiments, exploring issues of cultural memory, history, transgression, and community transformation. Combined with ideas of postmemory and rememory, palimpsest bodies are inherently trans-temporal as they perform re-visions of embodied gestures, vocalized calls, and sensory experiences.

Focusing on four projects from one of Mexico’s most significant contemporary theatre companies, La Máquina de Teatro, directed by renowned artists Juliana Faesler and Clarissa Malheiros, this study documents the rigorous performances of layered, plural, and trans identities as collaborative, feminist, and queer re-visions of official histories and collective memories, using ideas of scenarios, archives, and remains. Illustrated with over 100 color photos, Performing Palimpsest Bodies will appeal to artists and scholars interested in contemporary theatre and performance studies, critical dance studies, and collective creation.