Public Secrets from Peru
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In deciding to create a drama about violence in Peru, I have moved away from the usual academic discourse into the arena of performance. I have made this move for a number of reasons: foremost is my desire that English-speaking audiences (and readers) hear the words of those whose stories I and my colleagues have recorded because I know that tales of terror engender denial on the part of the listener. Perhaps dramatic form can provide a tolerable means of communication as a product of imagination, a fantasy, and to borrow a phrase that Taussig used in 1993 at a lecture at Cornell. It captures the 'reality of the really made up.' My hope is that by the end of this play, my interlocutor will have a new sense of the complex motivations of victimizers and victims caught in an increasing spiral of violence.