Signs of forced displacement in Sandra Massera's theatre

Abstract

The aim of this study is to semantically deconstruct the only two plays by the Uruguayan playwright Sandra Massera that address displacement: 1975 (2015 [2018]) and Ainara de Gernika (2023 [2025]). After situating them within their historical, social, and cultural contexts, the analysis will proceed to extract the meaning markers present in each scene (in the case of Ainara de Gernika, composed of three parts and fourteen scenes) or in each segment of a scene (in the case of 1975, a single, uninterrupted play), highlighting their corresponding archilexemes and inserting them into two tables based on the dichotomous conceptual axes that, in our view, underpin the experience of displacement: rootedness/uprootedness; homeland/foreignness; belonging/exclusion; memory/oblivion; hope/nostalgia. The intended outcome is the construction of a semantic-comparative map that makes it possible to visualize and systematize the key meanings through which Sandra Massera configures the experience of displacement in both plays, highlighting continuities, tensions, and internal shifts across the proposed conceptual axes. This analysis aims to reveal the poetics of displacement in Massera’s dramaturgy, showing how archilexemes organize a meaningful network that articulates the individual and the collective, the historical and the affective, and how these dichotomous categories function not as closed oppositions but as dynamic fields
of conflict and resignification. The results obtained will show that, in both works, the archilexemes organize a dynamic semantic network in which the tensions between rootedness and uprootedness, memory and oblivion, are not resolved in a stable manner but are continuously reconfigured. Likewise, it’ll demonstrate that displacement does not constitute a definitive rupture, but rather a prolonged process of symbolic recomposition that links past and present. The analysis confirms that memory functions as the primary space of resistance, articulating intimate experiences with historical processes of violence, and reaffirms the potential of contemporary theatre as an aesthetic and political practice capable of problematizing and re-signifying the migratory experience.