A Tactical Retreat: Artistic Experimentation, Sexualities, and Activism in Early-1980s Argentina

Abstract

This article analyzes the Grupo de la Mujer of the Taller de Investigaciones Teatrales (TIT). During the last civil-military dictatorship in Argentina, this group provided a space for alternative artistic training and creation that encouraged stage experimentation, within the framework of a theatrical tradition with few female directors. The text explores how these women, in times of political repression and conservative restoration, were able to access creation, a practice hegemonized by men. The hypothesis is that the Grupo de la Mujer resorted to androgyny in its theatrical productions through non-dualist sexual and gender performances. In this way, they put on stage their experience as women in dialogue with the readings of different generations of socialist feminism and with the small transnational networks of Trotskyist university sociability of the seventies. Methodologically, the article takes a qualitative approach to the use of in-depth interviews and analysis of archival documents (magazines, group publications, production scripts, photographs, etc.). In times of state terrorism, the women of the TIT pushed the limits of the “discreet revolution” and explored androgyny as a synthesis that is a unifying force in the fight against the patriarchy or capitalism.