Postmodern Culture

Given the country’s unique history and connections with the United States, especially since 1959, Cuba and its theater hold a singular interest for Western scholars, particularly those in the United States. Within Cuban studies, queerness and identities that challenge traditional definitions have occupied more and more space in the arts produced and analyzed on the island and beyond, although these spaces have been contested within official discourse. Bretton White’s Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba situates itself at these crossroads, adding to art and scholarship that seeks to understand the role and portrayal of the body and queer theory in Cuban theater at a particularly difficult historical moment: the Special Period in Times of Peace, an extended and extensive economic crisis beginning in 1991 as a direct result of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union. The Special Period restricted financial aid to the island nation, and was perhaps the most serious challenge to the Revolution. For the theater that White examines, the body—in particular, reproducing the physical discomfort and difficulties associated with life in Cuba at that time— takes center stage in order to highlight what defines and distinguishes Cuba during the Special Period, often posing direct challenges to official definitions from the state. While there are other studies of the arts in the Special Period and of Cuban theater since the Revolution, White’s Staging Discomfort is a welcome and necessary addition given its attention to queer studies within performance. These two areas need further scholarly exploration and will benefit Cuban studies and theater studies alike.

Physical discomfort is central to the theater White analyzes. White focuses on five theatrical works that foreground the bodies of actors and even spectators: Carlos Díaz’s 2007 production of the German play Las relaciones de Clara (Dea Loher, Klaras Verhältnisse, 2002); Baños públicos, S. A., by Esther Suárez Durán (written in 1994, published in 1996, awarded the UNEAC prize in 1998, and staged in 1999); El Ciervo Encantado’s production of Pájaros de la playa (2004); Chamaco, by Abel González Melo (read in 2005, published in 2006, and staged in Havana in 2006); and Perros que jamás ladraron (2012), written and directed by Rogelio Orizondo. Attention to the body is important in these plays because physical discomfort was a central, quotidian reality of the Special Period. Given the scarcity of food, clothing, and other goods, the body and its needs occupy much if not all thought of the Cuban people during this time. This reality is conveyed in the performance of these plays through the portrayal of sex workers who exchange sexual favors for gifts or food, for example, or is experienced by the audience in the lack of air-conditioning in the theater in which the play is staged. White’s analysis focuses on challenges to dominant definitions of identity and sexuality from the Revolution, showing that the body is central to these challenges. Her emphasis on same-sex intimacies reveals what she calls “an aesthetics of differentiation rather than assimilation” (21).

Staging Discomfort considers the role that queerness plays in theater performance in Cuba’s Special Period. As White underlines, theater, unlike other aspects of the Cuban art world, “is art by Cubans and for Cubans” (213). Theater is not a genre in Cuba for tourists or passers-through. This can be limiting for the theater community because engaging with the international art world can offer economic opportunity. On the other hand, an examination of Cuban theater allows scholars to see an art world created by and for Cubans. Scholars approaching this work from outside Cuban studies will thus benefit from the comprehensive contextualization that White presents to help understand and situate these works. Staging Discomfort positions the role of theater within the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and after, underlining the official incorporation of the arts into the definition and consolidation of the Revolution. Theater, or course, was...