Sartre's Theatre in Buenos Aires

Dirty Hands, Stage Version by Eva Halac (San Martín Theatre, 2022)

Abstract

This article analyzes the staging of Jean-Paul Sartre's Dirty Hands, directed by Eva Halac at the Teatro San Martín in 2022, situating it within the extensive history of Sartre's theatrical reception in Buenos Aires. It contextualizes this version within a broader trajectory encompassing translations, editions, and productions since the mid-20th century, highlighting that Dirty Hands has had few productions compared to other Sartre works, and that the three existing ones belong to diverse production circuits: commercial, independent, and state-run.

The work focuses on the singularity of Halac's approach, understood as a politics of difference that reinterprets Sartre's text from the perspective of post-pandemic Argentina. One of the central contributions of this version is the ideological reconfiguration of the text through the centrality given to the character of Jessica, whose demystifying perspective, detached from the "revolutionary catechism," introduces a contemporary reading associated with anti-politics. This rewriting not only differs from the source text, but reveals it, making Halac's staging a provocative milestone in the history of Sartre's reception in Argentina and an incentive to rethink his relevance in the 21st century.