Costantino, Roselyn

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Costantino, Roselyn

PERSONAL: Married Laurencio Carlos Ruis Villegas (an artist and graphic designer), 1966. Education: Montclair State University, M.A.; Arizona State University, Ph.D, 1992.

ADDRESSES: Office—Pennsylvania State University, 107 Smith Building, Altoona, PA 16601. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, associate professor of Spanish and women's studies.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and author of introduction and preface, with Diana Taylor; and contributor) Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2004.

Contributor to English-and Spanish-language books, including David Foster, editor, Latin American Writers on Gay and Lesbian Themes: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1994. Also contributor to journals, including Literal, El Centavo, Hispania, Latin American Theatre Review, and Theatre Journal.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Inconvenient Women: Contemporary Women's Performance Art in Mexico.

SIDELIGHTS: Combining her knowledge of Latin culture and women's studies, Roselyn Costantino is the coeditor, with Diana Taylor, of Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform. Costantino and Taylor "have assembled 26 documents, including critical readings by scholars, artists' statements and manifestoes, texts for the stage, and interviews with their subject playwrights, that give a crazy quilt account of women performing theater in Latin America," according to Martha Gies in the Women's Review of Books. In the face of poverty, cultural isolation, and sexism, these women bring a visceral sensibility to their performances, incorporating such themes as wife beating, cross-dressing, AIDS, and other subjects that are often taboo in traditional cultures.

One artist included in Costantino's book, Lebanese Mexican Astrid Hadad, has actually stirred up controversy in more progressive circles as well. After a performance in San Francisco, she was condemned by a group of feminists for flaunting her body. Insisting that the female body lies at the heart of so many struggles, Hadad rejects authoritarian censorship from both right and left. Some artists in the collection use public nudity and purposely outrageous images to attack the patriarchal ideal of silent, submissive women. Others confront political repression in their native countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and also Puerto Rico. The result, concluded Martha Gies in her review, "is a work rich in ideas, history, and personalities, and an important source book for learning, not only about theater in these eight Latin American countries, but also about key political issues, the risks of free expression, and the health and nearly unchartable diversity of the women's movement."