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Abstract

H.P. (Hans Pozo) by Luis Barrales is a dramatic text, premiered in 2007 by the Theater Company La Nacional under the direction of Isidora Stevenson: a man is found dismembered in the city of Santiago de Chile in the year 2006. The dramatist rewrites history, identifying and proposing some significant fragments of the prevailing cultural system, as it is visualized in Chilean drama at the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century. These fragmented dramas leave spaces, voids that the reader/spectator is called to complete from their own experience. Enhancing, for this purpose, the role of the author/architect, the one who deconstructs, organizes, and assembles an open, discontinued, proposal that leaves “holes” through which the constructions of meaning could sneak in (Hurtado), and the reader/spectator is confronted with a cruel and violent spectacle that accounts for a reality of a society controlled by dominating social groups. Barrales hands over an interpretive key to access the text, for the businessman uses the power he holds by appropriating a body, transforming it into his object of desire, evidencing a link of domination between the market and the corporeal.

The aim of this research is to analyze the dramatic text of H.P. (Hans Pozo) from the drama’s textuality according to the following categories: heteronormative society, repressed human behavior, homosexuality, and cruel images. The theoretical-critical discussions of Brossi, Foucault, and Spargo are fundamental in this case to approach the field of gender, sexuality, and masculinities, like Antonin Artaud, to stage cruelty in an investigative manner as a violence device. Barrales’ work forges a bridge with Artaud by introducing us to human beings, social, political, and cultural conflicts that travel through our history and inhabit our territory. Violence and cruelty act as a writing tradition, but they also create a viewpoint to observe our time and its vulnerating practices.