(Not) To Make It in America: The Reality of Immigrants in the Theater of Armando Discépolo

Abstract

In the theater of Armando Discépolo, the characters act as grotesque cartoons of every day life situations in an Argentina in the threshold of modernity at the beginning of the twentieth- century, when adaptation to social change was difficult, especially for immigrants. In his works, Discépolo displays deformed, incongruous characters, with serious flaws often derived from their migrant status and their being foreigners, “others” in a land not their own and in which they fail. Discépolo’s plays are social documents, and its characters attest to the importance of this playwright as a literary, historical and a political voice of his time.