Denise Stoklos
Denise Stoklos is the foremost solo performance artist from Latin America. Stoklos was in voluntary exile in England when she composed her first solo piece. She found English offered her "lightness," one more means for transporting herself from the "vision and vicinity of torture and dictatorship" of the Brazilian military regime. Since then, she has developed the capacity to work in multiple languages, linguistic as well as aesthetic. In the last thirty years Stoklos has developed many major pieces, including Mary Stuart (1987), Un-Medea (1989), Casa (1990), 500 Years—A Fax from Denise Stoklos to Christopher Columbus (1992), Civil Disobedience (1997), and I Do, I Undo, I Redo: Lousie Bourgeois (2000). She has won a number of prestigious national and international awards, including many for best actress in Brazil and a Guggenheim in the U.S. She performs in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, English, Ukranian, among others. Here are a few selections from the collection of her theoretical writings, Essential Theatre.