Intimate Rites and Ethical Proposals in Vivi Tellas’s Project Museums

• Main Author: Brenda Werth
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul 2013-09-01
• Series: Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença
• Subjects: Project Museums; Real; Affect; Postdramatic; Ethics
• Online Access: http://seer.ufrgs.br/presenca/article/view/39228/27129

Vivi Tellas’s Project Museums (1994-2000) invites us to examine the theatricality inherent in museums and, simultaneously, the ways in which theatre draws on functional and aesthetic elements from museums. Focusing on Federico León’s Museo Miguel Ángel Boezzio (1998), I discuss the impact of the use of autobiographical narratives onstage, taking into account observations by Hans-Thies Lehmann regarding this usage in a postdramatic context. I examine the ways in which the play crosses the boundary between real and fictional in order to establish an intimate connection with the audience and present possible modes of understanding the politicization of emotions on stage.