Theater has long functioned as a collective practice that exceeds the boundaries of representation, becoming a space of social encounter, ethical engagement, and political movement. Rather than privileging the isolated artist or passive spectator, many traditions emphasize collaboration, co-presence, and shared experience as foundational to performance. “Embodying Resistance” explores how this collective dimension transforms theater into a site where communities gather to witness and process lived realities, particularly those marked by violence, exclusion, and historical erasure within the Latin American and Spanish political contexts of oppression and social inequalities. This panel proposes to observe how theater operates as a dynamic forum in which the stage and audience are mutually implicated in the production of meaning, memory, and social awareness.

The extensive critical studies of scholar José Luis García Barrientos have challenged approaches that privilege the literary dimension of theater. In “Hacia un conocimiento ‘científico’ del teatro hispano actual” (2024), he argues that knowledge in theater, as an integrated performing art, is conceived as a relational practice and complex communicative act that emerges through the encounter of bodies, voices, space, and spectators. This notion of theater reminds us of how Judith Butler conceptualized the “right to appear” as a fundamental political claim enacted through the collective presence of bodies in public space. In Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), Butler states that assemblies are not merely gatherings but performative acts that assert visibility, recognition, and the demand for livable conditions, especially for those populations rendered precarious or invisible by dominant power structures. The act of appearing together becomes a form of resistance, where bodies articulate political claims even prior to, or beyond, formal speech. Importantly, this right is unevenly distributed, as systemic inequalities determine who can safely appear and whose presence is policed or erased. Thus, this panel approaches the “right to appear” to underscore the inseparability of embodiment, space, and political agency in struggles for justice and recognition.

Gail Bulman examines two transnational Microteatro performances staged in Spain, Argentina, and the United States: Casa de Cartón by Mauro Lemaire and On the Road Again by Beatriz Mateos. Her analysis explores homelessness and its intersections with mental health and happiness, both for those who experience it and those who witness it. She argues that the protagonists’ self-awareness and agency create an emancipatory space for spectators, fostering identification and critical reflection. By granting voice and presence to the homeless, these plays invite audiences to engage with the social and philosophical implications.

Extending this focus on precarious lives and their embodied dimensions, Osvaldo Sandoval-Leon analyzes Jorge Emilio Cardoso’s El desalojo de la calle de los negros (1992) as an aesthetic intervention aligned with the political work of activist organizations advocating for the rights of Afro-Uruguayan communities displaced during the Uruguayan civic-military dictatorship (1973–85). This displacement reaffirmed structural racism, denying these communities their right to neighborhood, culture, and memory. Drawing on Rita Segato’s concept of race as a “mark on the body,” this paper argues that theatre operates as a living archive, activating past and present contexts to restore voice to those expelled from urban spaces and to reinscribe their bodies within the public sphere.

To reinforce the idea of building community on stage, Melissa González-Contreras examines Isidora Aguirre’s El retablo de Yumbel (1986), produced under the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). This play was conceived to commemorate the region’s detained–disappeared and premiered before an audience that included surviving relatives, particularly women in search of their family members. By underlining the production’s impact on local networks of resistance, Melissa argues how the play’s creation process, sustained by collaboration with the Vicaria de Solidaridad, amplifies marginalized voices to construct spaces for shared mourning and civic hope. Ultimately, the play illuminates theater’s capacity to sustain community under conditions of repression and to participate in reconstructing collective memory.

Together, the three interdisciplinary papers underscore how theatrical practices in Latin America and Spain mobilize aesthetic forms to represent the agency of “precarious and disposable” lives (Butler, Franco). In this panel, the presenters’ research areas share a commitment not only by bringing together diverse and transnational approaches, but also to advance recent studies that focus on theatre’s capacity to render visible lives marked by precarity. While fostering spaces of recognition, memory, and collective agency, the plays analyzed in this panel challenge the structures producing such conditions while inviting audiences into processes of social engagement to open spaces of emancipation for critical awareness and, potentially, collective responses to systemic violence.