Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series: Mónica Ricketts, History, Temple University

Modern politics came to being in Peru around the 1800s. Political oratory boomed; struggles for power dominated the early republic. Women did not play a visible role in these manly-dominated spheres. We have to look somewhere else to find them in action. The theater of Lima offered them an arena. Women of the elite and lower groups were regulars. They smoked and raised their voices in protest. Some performed and exercised authority as actresses. A few worked as managers. Women played leading roles in Lima’s theater at a time when this institution was conceived of as the ideal space to build a virtuous republican nation.