Mexican Theatre and the Feminist Absurd

"Thanks for letting me out of the cage of one sterile routine only to lock me into the cage of another, a routine which according to all purposes and possibilities must be fruitful." (Castellanos, "Cooking Lesson" 210)

The term absurd often invokes ideas relating to incoherence, unbelievable circumstances, and false, occasionally comical situations. Theatre scholars would most likely add to this list Martin Esslin's pioneering work on absurd theatre, a study of male European dramatists whose works sagaciously explore the anguish and meaninglessness of the human condition by unconventional devices and irrational discourses. When paired with the word feminist (a notably multifaceted theoretical concept), the two terms, absurd and feminist, have been faulted for being relatively antithetical. Whereas notions of absurdism imply a lack of subjecthood and a struggle to recognize tangible purpose in the world, feminism, as explained by Celeste Derksen, "exhibits a commitment to promoting social change, which assumes a degree of agency that is anathema to absurdist philosophy" (222).

This study challenges what appears to be a seemingly antithetical relationship between absurdist and feminist ideologies and, in so doing, exposes absurdist philosophy and experimentalism to a process of reinterpretation within a feminist framework. The four Mexican plays to be examined apropos this process are: Elena Garro's La señora en su balcon (original publication 1959), Rosario Castellanos' El eterno femenino (1973), Sabina Berman's "Uno: El bigote" from El suplicio del placer (original publication 1978), and Gabriel Ochoa Lozano's Tres para el almuerzo (2010). All four plays are layered in varying degrees with characteristics of absurdism and propose that a predominantly allegorical nature to absurd theatre as symptomatic of "universal man" be reenvisioned to be more responsive to female-centered philosophies and critical interpretations.1 Through projections of fear, anxiety, and irrationality as well as meaningless and farcical experiences, these four works submit that absurdist viewpoints are not always antithetical to feminist ideologies but instead appear to be relatively complementary. One idea that emerges from these plays is that an absurdist philosophy can be applied to the condition of women living within a social system that comes across as absurd precisely because it reinforces an irrational situation specific to women. In each play, audiences witness progressively transgressive female subjectivities who question whether the boundaries of logic,...