Haunting the stage

Reclaiming women’s agency through María Velasco’s Primera Sangre

Abstract

With the emergence of the #MeToo movement, women’s experiences of trauma caused by violence against women and girls (VAWG) were publicly legitimized, though unevenly and amid backlash. In this context, the spectral condition of theatre allows for the articulation and visualization of what was previously rendered invisible. The spectre of otherness thus becomes a constitutive element of subjectivity itself. María Velasco’s play Primera Sangre (2023) offers an account of how the #MeToo movement has evolved in recent years by recounting the real story of a girl who was kidnapped and murdered in the 1990s, a case that was archived without resolution or justice. Through lyrical and performative strategies, Velasco reclaims the memory of women and girls whose lives were taken and whose identities were relegated to oblivion. By bringing to the stage the figure of the missing girl, Velasco summons the ghosts of the past, enabling a symbolic recovery of agency. The ghost also evokes the diminishing figure of the woman, suggesting how systemic patriarchal erasure operates through the silencing and shrinking of women’s and girls’ identities. In this way, Velasco not only reclaims deliberately erased forms of agency but also amplifies the voices of the oppressed, bringing otherness from the margins to the center. Ultimately, the play conveys a clear message: you belong, you always did, and we did not forget you. Hence, theatre becomes a space of feminist resistance and reparation, where memory and embodiment intertwine to restore presence to women and girls who were once erased.