Self-Censorship In The 80's

During the late 1970s and the early 1980s Argentina’s political climate was dominated by a dictatorship which was more ruthless than previous regimes Argentina had experienced . While art, specifically theatre, at the time was not particularly stifled by censorship from the state, the state terror invoked in artists a sort of self-censorship which crippled theatre and other areas of art more than official censorship would have. However, as time has progressed, contemporary playwrights have shaken such hindrances and created works which help the country to talk about its violent and shrouded past. The people of Argentina had already experienced a series of political coup d'etats by the 1970s. However, in 1976 the new military regime, the “junta”

In an effort to avoid censure, artists would censor their own works prematurely. While some consider the term “self-censorship” an attack on the individual artists who may have changed their style or content, others, like writer María Elena Walsh, illustrated the self-censorship as crisis in the way it impacted the individual artist. “We each have a broken pencil and an enormous eraser already encrusted in our brains.” (Walsh, ) Her fear was for the artists who had implicitly censored themselves, believing once they had learned to edit themselves out of fear, they would be unable to write freely after the regime had fallen. As much as Walsh’s thoughts seem filled with despair her fears were confirmed. After the regime was obliterated, artists continued to create the same types of safe content they had been creating under the

The premise is simple: actors born during the regime “reconstruct their parents’ youth.” (citation) This is done using a series of different props including photos, tapes, clothing, and attempting to answer the questions surrounding their parents’ identity and the political climate in Argentina before and during the regime: who the parents were, and what Argentina was like before the children were able to express themselves. “Each actor remakes scenes from the past in order to understand something of the future. As if they were their parents’ stunt doubles, they put on their clothes and try to represent their lives.” (Arias,