"Guatemalan theater began to address the atrocities committed during the thirty-six years of civil war, the longest war in Latin American history, in the 1990s. This theatrical movement expresses Guatemala's hope for renewal by looking at the past. Rather than being haunted by a traumatic history, the theater pushes the painful issues forward to center stage in order that the vicious cycle of old hatreds and grudges not hold them prisoner.

The plays examined in this study, which range from satire to tragedy, aid in breaking free from the bars that entrapped the country in violence and atrocities. However, the outrage is contained: the plays do not condemn the perpetrator, but rather highlight that understanding is the way to peace. The key to release from the cycle of violence is portrayed as remembering without blaming.".

"The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to identify how the civil war as well as the change to civilian government in 1986, which culminated in the signing of the Peace Accord in 1996, has affected the form and content of the plays written in the 1990s; and 2) to examine the work of the Guatemalan playwrights who have largely been ignored in Latin American theater studies."--BOOK JACKET.