Profiling El Vez, The Mexican Elvis: A Dramaturgical Methodology to «Make the Dream Real»

Abstract

This article discusses the critical practice the author uses in her writing about El Vez, The Mexican Elvis. After offering a brief introduction to El Vez, to the artist Robert Lopez who created him, and to the relationship between them and the icon of Elvis, the author presents the aims of Make the Dream Real, the monograph she is drafting about El Vez/Lopez, to consider how it draws on biographical writing and yet departs from it. The author argues for a dramaturgical methodology and its inherent critical proximity as a means of writing an analytical, contextualized, engaging analysis of an artist and entertainer. The dramaturgical methodology, built on dramaturgical thinking, values flexibility, using a variety of research practices combined with vibrant autoethnographic writing to offer vivid analysis that conveys the intellectual, emotional, and somatic experience of attending a live El Vez performance. The article discusses the value of deep dramaturgical thinking and critical proximity that opens up primary sources and archives through an extended dialogue with the artist built on mutual trust and respect.