Nothing to Do with Love

Book excerpt: This is the first anthology of Latin American drama to focus on a single major dramatist, Santiago Loza. "Nothing to Do with Love:" And Other Plays brings together, for the first time in English, several of Argentine playwright Santiago Loza's major works, along with visual documentation of the playwright's productions and their historical and thematic contexts. For nearly twenty years, Loza has written scripts that document the experiences of marginalized individuals who live outside Buenos Aires or in its overlooked barrios, exploring how rural, working-class, and otherwise marginal individuals inhabit a reality different from many of the urban audiences who flock to the nation's theater. Loza focuses his dramaturgy on individuals who lead lives as seamstresses, orphans, ranch hands, or disaffected adults talking about their problems without any expectation of resolution. His plays provide a sense of the richness of Argentina's contemporary theater by giving voice to individuals whose lives are complicated by the economic fallout caused by Argentina's adoption of neoliberal policies and the economic crash of 2001, as well as by the nation's rapidly changing viewpoints on race, gender identity, and sexuality. The first anthology of Latin American drama to focus on a single major dramatist, this book will draw attention anew to the contemporary theaters of Argentina, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela.