Theatrical productions allow playwrights and audiences alike to engage with historical and contemporary social realities. But what are the consequences when particular types of dramatic texts and performances are inadequately disseminated and preserved? Elena Machado Sáez (NHC Fellow, 2022–23) is analyzing the ways that Latinx theater in the United States depicts forms of activism and resistance while building shared archives and communities.
Elena Machado Sáez is professor of English and John P. Crozer Chair of English Literature at Bucknell University where she teaches courses on contemporary American, US Latinx, and Caribbean diaspora literatures. She has published several essays about Lin-Manuel Miranda, including “Debt of Gratitude: Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Politics of US Latinx Twitter,” in archipelagos and “Blackout on Broadway: Affiliation and Audience in In the Heights and Hamilton” in Studies in Musical Theater. Her most recent publication, “Hype it Up: US Latinx Theater on TikTok,” appears in TikTok Cultures in the United States (2022), edited by Trevor Buffone. Machado Sáez is also coauthor of The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature (Palgrave Macmillan 2007), which discusses how Cuban-American, Dominican-American, and Puerto Rican literatures challenge established ideas about the relationship between politics and the market.