Migrant Poetics, Life-Writings, and Chorality in Odisea by Teatro de los Andes

Abstract

This article examines Odisea by Teatro de los Andes as a work that rewrites the Homeric myth from a situated perspective, articulating life-writings (grafías de vida) and chorality in order to collectivize the narrative of displacement. Through an analysis of dramaturgical operations—testimony, polyphony, reconfiguration of the chorus, and mythical re-reading—the article demonstrates how the play produces an affective and political archive of migrancy that intervenes in regimes of visibility and renders historically marginalized voices audible. In this regard, chorality does not homogenize but rather organizes a plurality of singularities and experiences whose heterogeneity and variegation make visible the friction among temporalities, languages, and affiliations. The article thus argues that the piece does not celebrate a stable return; rather, it dramatizes the disjuncture of homecoming and the communal construction of memory. The mythical resignification, placed in the service of testimonial chorality, enables a scene wherein the local and the universal interpellate one another and wherein migrant life-writings institute forms of community and critical thought within contemporary Latin American theater.