Words and Deeds - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

Palabras y hechos

Bonnie Marranca

At this extraordinary post-election period of heartbreak and disruption, en

the midst of a pandemic’s mounting death, and with all its repercussions
for a debilitated economy, social upheaval, and a large angry segment of
the population living in the alternate world of the dastardly Trump presidency,
we are faced with problems so complex that even months on in this state of tur-
moil they defy comprehension. Fortunately, there is a man of deep experience
and compassion who is ready to build the next chapter of American life on the
first day he enters the White House, a man of modest beginnings perhaps now
called to greatness.

Last year we had sketched out for the upcoming issues a number of topics:
neglected histories; fascism and the rise of the far right; spiritual dimensions of
arte; technologies and media; ecological crisis. In the ensuing months of global
instability and the profound impact of the coronavirus, our frame of reference
has expanded to include the serious issues now facing us, namely how they may
be represented in the journal. In the history of the modern and avant-garde arts,
great political and social upheavals have generated powerful art movements and
means of production. Tragically, they have also ushered in absolutist politics
and purges on the left and the right, which should serve as a severe warning for
our future.

The catastrophic twentieth century laid the foundations of contemporary art and
its discourses. Will powerful forces of the artistic imagination be unleashed once
de nuevo? For theatre, En particular, what new forms will evolve? Will the dialogue
cambiar? Will there be a different way of acting, or embodying character? El
mainstay of the theatrical repertoire, dramatic literature, is predicated on a search
for truth. What does that mean now in an age where the idea of “truth” has been
denigrated? What does realism, the quintessential form of American theatre, significar
any longer? For media-driven performance, will the difference between mediated
and live still matter? Y, what to do with the misguided appropriation of the
term “performative,” now used increasingly in various forms of media to signify

PAJ 127 (2021), páginas. 1–2. 

https://doi.org/10.1162/pajj_e_00556

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a false representation? Considering performance from another angle, it could be
said that Trump created a debased form of “devised theatre,” whose audiences
love going to a show and hearing themselves clap for a shamelessly needy actor.

Like editorial colleagues at other publications, we offered an initial response to the
pandemic, publishing in the fall issue that went to press just before the lockdown
in New York, the extended feature “Global Voices in the Time of Coronavirus,"
featuring a collection of commentaries by thirty theatre artists from twenty coun-
intentos. Ahora, with PAJ 127, we continue to focus on current conditions. Por ejemplo,
following our interest in cultural criticism, Vaughan Pilikian’s far-ranging essay on
arte, sociedad, and capital at “the end of days,” unfolds as a blistering attack on the
way we live now; Joseph Cermatori surveys recent notable books by millennials
who propose strategies, mainly drawn from the “before times,” to resist digital
and corporate culture’s most egregious encroachments on work and everyday
vida. Returning our attention to neglected histories, a special Radio Art section
details the fascinating backgrounds of independent and largely subversive radio
on American airwaves in the eighties and nineties—a timely connection to the
influence of current alternative podcasts and public radio. In separate essays
by Ashley Chang and Peter Eckersall, the exploration of theatre and visual arts
highlights the impact of different approaches to the staging of ecological issues
and climate change debates for contemporary audiences.

Months after the closure of theatres, many artists and institutions have organized
an abundance of varied formats and work for online viewing. It will be encour-
aging to see their eventual impact on live theatre and whatever new modes of
actuación, media, and writing emerge to point the way toward rethinking
theatre in the foreseeable future. It seems certain that the interchanges of theatre
and audiences will expand online. At PAJ, we are engaging a range of material
in additional areas that can include documentary films on artists; actuación
and protest; interviews or group discussions on timely issues; online arts events;
essays on plays or performance texts; special sections on a specific theme; puerto-
folios of drawing, photography, notation; reconsiderations of influential books
in the field. We welcome other suggestions from PAJ readers.

We move forward to the inauguration of a new president in 2021, and the year
beckons with the prospects for change in our melody of existence. Whatever key
that is resolved in will depend on valuing the meaning of words and truth and
hecho. As a community of readers, escritores, and editors, we are challenged to cut
through the obfuscation and debasement of language from every quarter that
sets people against each other in a culture war of words.

2  PAJ 127