ABSTRACT
The works of Aída Bortnik and Gerardo Mario Goloboff—the subject of this study—exemplify these trends. Bortnik began her career as a journalist, although since 1972 she has been a playwright, theater director, and screenwriter. When her life was threatened during the military dictatorship she moved to Spain, where she lived for three years and worked for Spanish television. In several of Bortnik’s theatrical adaptations—including Domesticadas [Housebroken], Papa querido [Dear Dad], and Primaveras [Spring]—women demand to be told the truth. They leave their passive, conformist role, pushed by that moment in which their personal history clashes with collective history. In Bortnik’s play Papa querido the retrospective exploration is brought about by the absence of the father, whose impact on his children seems to be far greater when they gather to remember him after his death, than it was while he was alive. Similarly, in Pobre mariposa, the father’s death involves his daughter with the real, outside world.
