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Theatre of War: Lola Arias’ Documentary Theatre as Innovative Tool for Historical Dialogue

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History Education in the Digital Age

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Abstract

The work of internationally renowned playwright Lola Arias explores the limits of historical representation working on the idea of “remaking” troubled pasts with the participation of their real protagonists. In her film Theatre of War former soldiers from Argentina and UK who participated in the Falkland-Malvinas war (1982) represent their past experience in the war and interpret their own roles in that violent conflict through a fascinating and intriguing dialogical experience. In line with the latest studies on historical culture, conflict‚ and history education, this chapter will analyse the potential of this cultural production in promoting multiperspectivity, historical dialogue and social understanding through its key aspects: (a) Substantive contestation of official narratives about historical events, usually nationalist and/or imperialist, by contrasting them with historically silenced voices; (b) a fundamentally dialogical approach to these new narratives, that provides a space for empathy which does not simplify existing conflicts; and (c) the mediation of a wide variety of historical resources that reinforce the denaturalization of historical accounts, making possible a horizon of new critical elaborations on the past.

The work of this book has been supported by Projects RTI 2018–096,495-B-I00, MINECO-FEDER, (AEI, Spain) and PICT2019-02,477 (ANPCYT, Argentina), coordinated by the second author.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The film is part of a larger project that the playwright—a world reference in the genre—has been carrying out since 2014. Arias considers this project a “social laboratory”, and thus far, it has led to a video installation (Veteranos, 2014, https://lolaarias.com/es/veterans/), a play (Campo Minado, 2016, https://lolaarias.com/es/minefield/) and the film studied herein (Teatro de Guerra, 2018, https://lolaarias.com/es/theatre-of-war), three different productions that share the language of documentary theatre in innovative formats with a strong role played by digital resources.

  2. 2.

    https://www.argentina.gob.ar/educacion/efemerides/2-abril-malvinas.

  3. 3.

    In fact, that support also occurred in broad Latin American sectors, as illustrated by this article by Gabriel García Márquez in the Spanish newspaper El País on April 14, 1982: https://elpais.com/diario/1982/04/14/opinion/387583205_850215.html.

  4. 4.

    In line with these new conceptualisations, in 2014 the Malvinas and Islands of the South Atlantic Museum was inaugurated, located in the Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, on whose premises the former Mechanical School of the Navy (ESMA) worked, a former clandestine centre for detention, torture and extermination.

  5. 5.

    https://www.argentina.gob.ar/educacion/efemerides/2-abril-malvinas.

  6. 6.

    Title of the central lecture by Lola Arias at the Royal Central School of the University of London, 6/6/2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Research of Latin America (IICSAL), FLACSO–CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    María Cantabrana & Mario Carretero

  2. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid & Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO–Argentina), Madrid, Spain

    Mario Carretero

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  1. María Cantabrana
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Correspondence to María Cantabrana .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO-Argentina), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Mario Carretero

  2. Montevideo, Uruguay

    María Cantabrana

  3. FLACSO-Argentina, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Lomas de Zamora, Argentina

    Cristian Parellada

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Cantabrana, M., Carretero, M. (2022). Theatre of War: Lola Arias’ Documentary Theatre as Innovative Tool for Historical Dialogue. In: Carretero, M., Cantabrana, M., Parellada, C. (eds) History Education in the Digital Age. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10743-6_12

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