Gambaro’s Information for Foreigners On “percepticide”

Source note Taylor, Diana. “Percepticide.” Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War.” Durham and London: Duke UP,

Percepticide: definition “percepticide” refers to a form of willful blindness that Taylor calls “just looking” “What do we learn to focus on? What are we trained to overlook?” (121) “The triumph of the atrocity was that it forced people to look away” (122) percepticide is the opposite of witnessing: it is an active refusal (out of apathy, or out of fear) to bear witness

Key Idea Theatre is not just a force for good and activism and witness in the world – it does not automatically summon a witness. In fact, it can often discourage witnessing. Often throughout history, theatrical spectacles in the public sphere have been used as a diversionary tactic, to get us to look away from what is really happening.

Theatre and terrorism “dealing in disappearance and making the visible invisible are […] profoundly theatrical. Only in the theatre can the audience believe that those who walk offstage have vanished into limbo.” “So the theatricality of torture ad terror […] does not necessarily lie in its visibility, but rather in its potential to transform, to recreate, to make the visible invisible, the real unreal” (Disappearing Acts 132, my emphasis). The question then becomes: how might we use theatre to counteract this process of percepticide? Can theatre become a witness to its dark side?

How does Griselda Gambaro stage “percepticide”? Gambaro focuses first and foremost on the audience! “The looking, not the violence, is central. […] It strips us of our traditional invisibility as spectators” (Taylor, “Griselda Gambaro…” 170) This is why “metatheatre” is so important in Information for Foreigners… Our choice, as spectators – to see, or to look away º becomes the ultimate subject of the play!