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Paper: “Large Production, Big History: The Actor-Network Dramaturgy of Good Bye Mister Freud through Space and Time.”

Paper: “Large Production, Big History: The Actor-Network Dramaturgy of Good Bye Mister Freud through Space and Time.”

One conference right after the other, I return to the ASTR American Society for Theatre Research Conference between November 14–17, this year in Seattle, WA on the theme “Ecologies of Time and Change.” I’ll discuss my paper “Large Production, Big History: The Actor-Network Dramaturgy of Good Bye Mister Freud through Space and Time” during the “Big Histories: Experimental Methods for Tracking Change Across Bodies, Generations, and Geographies in Performance” Working Session.
To illustrate the weave of human and non-human actors converging over long stretches of space and time, I look at the interconnected transatlantic networks of Good Bye Mister Freud (Paris, 1974), a large-cast “tango-opera” devised by French director Jérôme Savary and queer Argentine playwright Copi for the Grand Magic Circus, Savary’s company. From the vantage point of this sprawling, melodramatic, humorous show involving a heroine’s journey from the Tsar’s Russia to NYC and the birth of psychoanalysis, I trace the genealogies of actors that influenced Savary’s and Copi’s movements around the globe until their meeting in Paris, and consequently contributed to the production’s materialization. By tracking the lineage of extra-aesthetic actions, I show how France and Argentina themselves, with their complex political histories, became contributing actors to the dramaturgy of the Copi-Savary-Grand Magic Circus production.

Book: Actor-Network Dramaturgies: The Argentine of Paris

Book: Actor-Network Dramaturgies: The Argentine of Paris

After about 6 years from project through on-site research in Buenos Aires and Paris to book, I just finished checking the proofs of my monograph Actor-Network Dramaturgies: The Argentine of Paris, forthcoming in August with Palgrave Macmillan in the Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History series. What a journey!
In the meantime, I was fortunate to receive two great endorsements:
 
1. from Maria Delgado, professor and director of research at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK:
A rich, engaging and beautifully written exploration of stagings produced by Argentines who chose to settle in Paris in the 1960s. Boselli’s monograph is not simply a repositioning of iconic directors such as Jorge Lavelli, Jérôme Savary, and Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, but also an exploration of a wider group – including artist and playwright Copi, costume designer Juan Stoppani, set designer Roberto Platé, and performers Facundo Bo, Marucha Bo, and Marilú Marini — as a means of exploring the different networks through which they collaborated. In tracing the ventures these artists generated, this important monograph asks pertinent questions about nationhood, exile, intercultural collaborations, non-human agents, global and local exchange, and the political, social and cultural agents that shaped their navigation of intersecting cultural spaces.

2. from Leo Cabranes-Grant, Professor of Theatre at the University of California, Santa Barbara:

Spanning two hemispheres and two mega-cities, Stefano Boselli’s pioneering book manages to map, with great precision and inclusivity, the complex exchanges that make TransAtlantic cultures possible and sustainable. Adapting and refining the foundational principles of actor-network analysis, Boselli captures the creative and political transactions connecting Argentinian playwrights, directors, and performers living in France to funding resources, human and non-human agencies, policies, fashion, or set designers. What’s truly significant about Boselli’s research is that he manages to keep all these elements not only together —which is already quite a feat—but also in perpetual motion (as they are experienced and assembled). His meticulously detailed presentation of both the macro and micro factors involved, and his vision of intercultural relations as a flowing process that is constantly redressing its own forms posits the possibility of a richer methodological template breaching the gaps between sociology, performance studies, affect studies, and theater historiography. Last but not least, his book proposes a dynamic approach to diaspora studies, showing that geography is defined by our collaborations as much as by the lands we leave behind or the new lands we inhabit.