INTERPRETING THEATER AND TERROR

Diana Taylor, assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese, is studying ways in which politics and the theater have merged in Latin America. She will first compile a critical anthology of contemporary Latin American plays. Politics is the launching point for the second part, in which she will study the relationship between theater and terrorism. "Questions about the place of theater and society, originally debated by Plato (he banished drama from his republic) and Aristotle (he defended it in the Poetics), take on new meaning, as well as a special urgency, when terrorism becomes the ultimate 'theater of cruelty,' " says Taylor.

This summer she will visit Argentina, where drama and terrorism are linked. Theaters staging politically unpopular works have been bombed or burned, sometimes during performances. Using the country's "Dirty War" as a backdrop, Taylor will study "how theater is a threat to a military dictatorship and how it exposes the theatrical aspects of a regime."