The paradoxes of acting work in independent theater. A comparative study of the independent theater representations of actors and actresses of La Plata between origins and today

Abstract

The objective of the article is to investigate the ruptures and continuities of the definition of independent theater in its origins (first decades of the last century) in Buenos Aires and particularly in the city of La Plata, in respect of the most recent representations formulated by the group of actors and independent theater actresses in the city. In this article, social representations are understood as ways to signify the interpretations that subjects make of their environment and from which they manage to communicate (Castorina et al., 2010). This concept is explained in connection with the social structure and the built-in habitus of the countryside (Bourdieu, 2007) and they are characterized by being indeterminate and open systems (Longo, 2004). In relation to the world of work, social representations are “the object of both collective struggles between social groups and individual struggles between attributions and appropriations of classifications by the subject” (Longo, 2004, p. 5). To undertake this study, it has been carried out a documentary analysis of different authors who have addressed the origins of independent theater in Buenos Aires and La Plata. In addition, twenty in-depth interviews with actors and actresses residing in the city of La Plata, participant observations in talks, assemblies and meetings that bring together different actors and actresses from independent theater and the process of rehearsals and performances of two independent theater casts in La Plata were conducted , as well as a total of eighty-nine surveys in a virtual way aimed at actors and actresses from the same city. For the analysis, data constructed from a qualitative perspective using techniques and instruments typical of qualitative and quantitative methodology have been included. For data processing, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Atlas/ ti software have been used.