Theatrical Maps of Buenos Aires: Survey, Cartography, and Dérives past the Theaters of the City

Abstract

This essay surveys and maps theaters in the City of Buenos Aires, those that remain and those that do not. We map and present them together as part of the same history, memory, and performance tradition. Based in new cultural geography, we stress the fundamental importance of the urban past to an understanding of the present, and recognize it as a terrain in continuous symbolic and social reconstruction. For this reason, we analyze two instances of dérives (and their respective affective maps of the Microcentro and Abasto neighborhoods) in which the immaterial theatrical past became, at the same time, permanent. The dérive is a theoretical-practical and political tool, capable of providing other possible collective narratives about the urbanscape. It allows us to inhabit the territories that surround us in a non-neutral way, to look at and navigate the city again, to analyze and recognize past disputes and hegemonies that have emerged within the public space, and to attend to more current figurations of urban and national patrimony. In this way, the dérive, the map, and patrimony become the analytical basis for the following articulation of memory that is theatrical, urban, and up-to-date.