"REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE": QUEER UTOPIA IN VICTOR JARA'S THEATRE

Abstract

This essay argues that Víctor Jara (1932-1973) developed a revolutionary approach to stage direction that foregrounds gesture over dialogue, enabling the construction of queer characters whose gender expressions and sexualities are articulated through bodily poses derived from Anglo-American subcultures of the 1950s and 1960s. I contend that Jara draws upon the performance techniques of James Dean, thereby aligning himself with the pedagogical legacy of the Actors Studio-whose queer and left-wing inheritors reinterpreted the Stanislavskian method. Through this methodology, Jara not only engages in aesthetic practices contemporaneous with directors such as Nicholas Ray, but also uncovers the queer subtexts embedded in plays by British New Wave dramatists, in Chile, often reductively categorized as proponents of the Theatre of the Absurd. To substantiate these claims, firstly, I examine the subcultural milieu in which Jara was trained as a theatre practitioner and then I offer close readings of three key productions he directed: in 1959, Parecido a la felicidad (1959) by Alejandro Sieveking, in 1965, The Knack (1962) by Ann Jellicoe, and, in 1968, Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1963) by Joe Orton