Carnival Theater

Offers a new model for interpreting popular national culture through Uruguays carnival theater troupes The murgas are troupes of performers, musicians, writers, and creators who, during Montevideos Carnival, perform on the tablados, temporary stages built in the neighborhoods of Uruguays capital city each year. Throughout the period of Uruguays subjection to a brutal dictatorship and in the following era of democratization, the murgas, envisioned originally as popular theater, were transformed into a symbol of social resistance, celebrated by many and perceived by others as menacing and subversive. Focusing on the cultural practices of the lower classes and more specifically on the processes and productions of the murgas, Gustavo Remedis Carnival Theater is a deeply thoughtful consideration of Uruguayan societys identity crisis and subsequent redefinition in the wake of the authoritarian-bureaucratic-technocratic regimes of the 1970s. A revealing work of cultural criticism, the book proposes a new set of criteria for the interpretation and critique of national culture.