Why? 
The field of performance has always faced the lack of primary sources when it comes to approaching street theatre due to the ephemeral aspect to it. It is largely a form of art which cannot be easily studied as it happens in random, public spaces. It circulates outside the boundaries of any traditional venue, thus outside the sight of traditional scholarship. Street theatre has depended in large measure on the availability of technology to collect and preserve its memory.
We aim to build an archive which contains interviews with the directors, producers, and actors in which we record their memories on the acting, play reception, plod and rehearsals that are associated with the plays. The purpose of this project is to not only house them but especially create an oral and visual history of them that can intertwine different countries and cultural traditions.
Consequently, our mission is three-fold: 1) to document Latin American Street Theatre’s diverse history through oral history interviews representing multiple perspectives, 2) to preserve the oral histories collected and make them available to researchers, teachers, students, and public in general, and 3) to actively engage in outreach, assisting university and public community members in learning about this oral history research, and in creating their own projects.
For more information on Marcelo Carosi, principal investigator, please click here.
Whether you have material related to Latin American street theatre, be it audio/audiovisual recordings, ephemera, photographs, posters, etc., which relate to street performances done by theatre collectives, or you are a member of these collectives, and want to be part of the project, please fill the form and we can contact you. Thank you!