Professor Ruth Hellier-Tinoco
Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico, 2019.
Performing Palimpsest Bodies proposes the concept of palimpsest bodies to interpret provocative theatre and performance experiments that explore issues of cultural memory, bodies of history, archives, repertoires and performing remains. Combined with ideas of postmemory and rememory, palimpsest bodies are inherently trans-temporal as they perform re-visions of embodied gestures, vocalized calls and sensory experiences. Focusing on one of Mexico’s most significant contemporary theatre companies, La Máquina de Teatro, this study documents the playfully rigorous performances of layered, plural and trans identities as collaborative, feminist, and queer re-visions of official histories and collective memories.