Translation and gender in contemporary Mapuche dramaturgy

Abstract

The theater company Kimvn Teatro, under the leadership of Mapuche playwright and director Paula González Seguel, produces and features documentary dramaturgies performed and written by a collaborative group of mostly female Mapuche artists and non-professional actors. The present study seeks to critically examine multilingualism in the written text of Kimvn Teatro's debut work, Ñi pu tremen - Mis antepasados, from a transnational feminist translation studies approach. This analysis focuses on the intersections of drama translation, female solidarity, feminist politics of authorship, and cultural representation of Mapuche women in the diaspora. The research explores how collaborative authorship and translinguistic strategies disrupt intersecting regimes of patriarchal and colonial power. Furthermore, the significance of translation is examined in terms of addressing the limitations imposed by monolingualism in contemporary Latin American drama. This entails the deterritorialization of Spanish and the affirmation of Mapuche culture and language within the framework of a “minor documentary dramaturgy”.