Traveling troupes: The performance of Puerto Rican Identity in plays by Luis Rafael Sanchez and Myrna Casas

In Puerto Rican theater, the debate on the production and interpretation of national culture has played out primarily in the space of the family. In Luis Rafael Sanchez's Quintuples (1984) and in Myrna Casas' "El gran circo eukraniano" (1988), the motif of traveling family acting troupes provides ways of imagining Puerto Rican identity beyond the colonialist-nationalist polarity that has framed long-standing discussions on the islands's political status and cultural identity. In both plays, the construction of multiple performance spaces implicit in the migratory condition of the troupes and the lack of a set distinguished by the family home, a structure that could delimit a particular vision of the nation, highlight a desire to investigate and defend identities not bound by nationalism. Likewise, the presence of performing families and the use of performance as an activity to explore identity exposes the instability of the national family construct as a foundation for collective identity.