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Jean Graham-Jones

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Research Interests

  • Contemporary and Colonial Latin American (especially Argentine) Theatre and Performance
  • Theatre of the Spanish Golden Age
  • Theatre, Performance, Literary, Critical, and Cultural Theories
  • Theories of Globalization and Coloniality
  • Translation Theories and Practice

Education

  • Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Los Angeles

Contact

Jean Graham-Jones is the Lucille Lortel Professor of Theatre in the Theatre and Performance Studies Program and in the Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures Program.

Professor Graham-Jones is the author of fifty articles and book chapters, and her book-length publications include: Exorcising History: Argentine Theater under Dictatorship (2000, Spanish translation 2018), Reason Obscured: Nine Plays by Ricardo Monti (ed. and trans., 2004), BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation (ed. and trans., 2008), Timbre 4: Two Plays by Claudio Tolcachir (ed. and trans., 2010), and Evita, Inevitably: Performing Argentina’s Female Icons Before and After Eva Perón (2014).

In 2019 she published Lola Arias: Re-enacting Life, an edited volume of performance scripts, interviews, and other texts on the work of Buenos Aires theatre artist Lola Arias, and she is currently writing a monographic study of the challenges in contemporary performance translation, based on her experiences as a scholar, translator, director, and actor. She is a former editor of Theatre Journal and and serves on the editorial boards of nine journals and book series. From 2015 to 2019, she was the elected President of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Professor Graham-Jones was most recently seen performing in the world premiere of Terry Galloway’s The Ugly Girl at the 2014 Disability and Deaf Arts (DADA) Festival in Liverpool.

Awards and Grants

Selected: Honorable Mention, Association for Theatre in Higher Education's Excellence in Editing Award (2020), Distinguished Alumna, UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese (2019), Fellow, International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures (Freie Universitaet 2011-16), Translation Publication Grant, PROSUR, Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2010)

Professional Affiliations and Memberships

Association for Theatre in Higher Education, American Society for Theatre Research, International Federation for Theatre Research, Latin American Studies Association

Courses Taught

Contemporary Latin American Theatre, 1960-present, Performance and the Latin American City, Transatlantic Theatre and Performance: Golden Age Spain and Pre-Conquest/Early Colonial Latin America, The Borders of Latinx American Theatre and Performance, History of Theatrical Theory, Advanced Theatre Research

Publications

  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2021. “Translation and/as Theatre and Performance Historiography: Towards a Reconsideration of a Neglected but Omnipresent Challenge,” in The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance Historiography, eds. Tracy Davis and Peter Marx. New York: Routledge.

  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2021. “Autogestión, horizontalidad y ‘riesgos baratísimos’: El Pampero Cine y el teatro independiente,” in Entre/telones y pantallas: Afectos y saberes en la performance argentina contemporánea, eds. Jordana Blejmar, Philippa Page, and Cecilia Sosa. Buenos Aires: Libraria, 2021.

  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2021. “Re-enacting life: postfazione,” in Stratagemmi 41 (2021). Trans. Corrado Rovida and Giulia Troncatti.

  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2020 “International Festivals in Latin America: Festival Santiago a Mil and Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires,” in The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals, ed. Ric Knowles, Cambridge: CUP.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2020. “The Translational Politics of Surtitling: Lola Arias’s Campo minado / Minefield,” in Theatrical Speech Acts: Performing Language, eds. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Torsten Jost, and Sascha Iris Jain. New York: Routledge.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2019. “Assembly as community: politics and performance in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Buenos Aires,” in The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics, eds. Helena Grehan and Peter Eckersall, New York / London: Routledge
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2018. “Cozarinsky y su médico: ‘Hay algo en la ficción que con el tiempo se vuelve documental,’” in Biodrama, Proyecto Archivos: Seis documentales escénicos, by Vivi Tellas, eds. Pamela Brownell and Paola Hernández. Buenos Aires/Córdoba, Argentina: Papeles Teatrales (Instituto Nacional de Teatro).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2018. “Buenos Aires Artists and Contemporary Transnational Performance Networks: Lola Arias Transports the Real,” in Theatre and Cartographies of Power: Repositioning the Latina/o Americas, eds. Analola Santana and Jimmy Noriega. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2017. “La representación de la otredad en la escena actual porteña: hacia una gestualidad teatral ‘decolonial,’” in Estudios teatrales: nuevas perspectivas y visiones comparadas, eds. Alba Saura Clares and Isabel Guerrero Llorente. Murcia, Spain: EDITUM (University of Murcia).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2017. “The Critical and Cultural Faultlines of Translation/Adaptation in Contemporary Theatre,” in Staging and Adapting Translation, eds. Emma Cole and Geraldine Brodie. London: Routledge.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2016. “The Coyote-Scholar in the Doctoral Theatre and Performance Studies Classroom: Reading Rabinal Achí, Güegüence, sor Juana, and Rascón Banda,” Latin American Theatre Review 50.1 (Fall 2016).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2016. “Lola Arias Re-enacts the Real.” Commissioned 1,500-word program note for Brighton (England) International Theatre Festival.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2016. “Buenos Aires’s Independent Theatre Scene,” in Theatre Journal 68 (May 2016).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2015. English-language translation of Spam by Rafael Spregelburd. Theater 15.1 (Winter 2015).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2015. “Apocalypse and Amnesia, or Adrift in Our Own Garbage: Rafael Spregelburd’s Spam,” Theater (Yale University) 45.1 (Winter 2015).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2015. “Translation,” Contemporary Theatre Review, special issue “The Politics, Processes, and Practices of Editing.” 25.1 (2015).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2015. 47 commissioned entries on Argentine and Uruguayan actors and actor-training. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Actors and Acting. Ed. Simon Williams. Cambridge: CUP.
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Books

Lola Arias: Re-enacting life

Lola Arias: Re-enacting Life

Performance Research Books, 2019

by Jean Graham-Jones Lucille Lortel Professor, Theatre and Performance, Professor, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures

Re-enacting Life documents the work of the multifaceted Argentine theatre artist Lola Arias, whose work crosses generations, countries, genres and performance sites. The edited collection brings together playscripts, synopses, interviews, questionnaires, notes, photographs, floorplans and other primary documentation of Arias’s varied performance work, which today includes nearly thirty plays, installations, audience and artist performances and curated events. Also included are the voices of some of her many collaborators and spectators, in the form of reflections and essays written by artists, art historians, and performance and media scholars., many of whom belong to Arias’s own generation.

Published January 2019

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Evita, Inevitably: Performing Argentina's Female Icons Before and After

Evita, Inevitably: Performing Argentina's Female Icons Before and After Eva Perón

by Jean Graham-Jones Lucille Lortel Professor, Theatre and Performance, Professor, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures

Evita, Inevitably sheds new light on the history and culture of Argentina by examining the performances and reception of the country's most iconic female figures, in particular, Eva Perón, who rose from poverty to become a powerful international figure. The book links the Evita legend to a broader pattern of female iconicity from the mid-nineteenth century onward, reading Evita against the performances of other female icons: Camila O'Gorman, executed by firing squad over her affair with a Jesuit priest; Difunta Correa, a devotional figure who has achieved near-sainthood; cumbia-pop performer Gilda; the country's patron saint, the Virgin of Luj¡n; and finally, Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Employing the tools of discursive, visual, and performance analysis, Jean Graham-Jones studies theatrical performance, literature, film, folklore, Catholic iconography, and Internet culture to document the ways in which these 'femicons' have been staged.

Published October 2014
University of Michigan Press, 2014

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Timbre 4

Timbre 4: Two Plays by Claudio Tolcachir

Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publisher, 2011

by Jean Graham-Jones Lucille Lortel Professor, Theatre and Performance, Professor, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures

Jean Graham-Jones and Elisa Legon, co-translator of one play

Claudio Tolcachir's Timbre 4 is one of the most exciting companies to emerge from Buenos Aires's vibrant contemporary theater scene. The Coleman Family's Omission and Third Wing, the two plays that put Timbre 4 on the international map, are translated here into English for the first time, accompanied by Jean Graham-Jones' introductory study.

Published August 2011

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BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation

BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation

Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publisher, 2008

by Jean Graham-Jones Lucille Lortel Professor, Theatre and Performance, Professor, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures

This publication of the four plays presented at New York’s Performance Space 122 2006 festival, BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation, brings US readers cutting-edge work from one of Latin America’s most vibrant theatrical scenes. 

Published September 2008

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BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation: Recent Argentinian Plays

BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation: Recent Argentinian Plays

by Jean Graham-Jones Lucille Lortel Professor, Theatre and Performance, Professor, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures

This volume includes four plays staged in English translation in November 2006 at Performing Space 122, New York City. The edition includes a foreword by Shoshana Polanco, Buenos Aires in Translation (BAiT) creative producer, as well as introductions to each play by the editor/translator Jean Graham-Jones.

Published September 2008
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publ. 2008

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Reason Obscured: Nine Plays by Ricardo Monti

Reason Obscured: Nine Plays by Ricardo Monti

UNKNO, 2004

by Jean Graham-Jones Lucille Lortel Professor, Theatre and Performance, Professor, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures

Jean Graham-Jones and Ricardo Monti

 Reason Obscured is the first English-language translation of plays by renowned Argentinean dramatist Ricardo Monti, one of Latin America’s most distinctive, innovative, and influential contemporary playwrights. The annotated collection includes four full-length works (An Evening with Mr. Magnus & Sons, Visit, Marrathon, and The Obscurity of  Reason) and five one-act plays (The Beaded Curtain, A South American Passion-Play, Asunción, Hotel Columbus, and Finland), all written between 1970 and 2000. Graham-Jones’s introductory study and bibliography of works by and about Monti also accompany the collection.

Published June 2004

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Exorcising History: Argentine Theater Under Dictatorship

Argentine Theatre Under Dictatorship

UNKNO, 2000

by Jean Graham-Jones Lucille Lortel Professor, Theatre and Performance, Professor, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures

Exorcising History documents, contextualizes, and analyzes theater produced in Buenos Aires during Argentina's military dictatorship of 1976-83 and the nation's subsequent return to democracy.

Published February 2000

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Related News

May 16, 2018

A Commitment to Theater

Professor Jean Graham-Jones on her recent appointment as the Lortel Chair in Theatre