First legislative debates on a (possible) Argentine Theater Law in the '80s

Abstract

This work addresses the attempt of the Argentine legislative power to sanction a National Theater Law, in the first years of democratic recovery. Although this was not achieved, the debate that took place laid a solid foundation, which was successfully resumed the following decade. We analyze the exchanges that occurred in the National Congress, when in 1984 it was intended to create a sectoral organization for the promotion of unofficial theater. We approach theatrical practice from the paradigm of Osvaldo Pellettieri (1997), understood as a system from which he characterized the national theater field and its temporal evolution, based on its internal constitution, and at the same time, according to what motivates its changes by virtue of contact with the local social series and with other cultures. Finally, to understand the relationship between the period of democratic opening and the conceptions of theatrical activity evidenced in the debates, we consider Daniel Mazzei's (2011) approach to the “democratic transition” in Argentina, and the concept of “structures”. of feeling” that Raymond Williams (1980) develops as a cultural hypothesis through which he analyzes how the structures of experience and their links with a generation are constituted, in a certain period.