Junk Dramaturgies or How to Produce a Play from Anything

(Valencia, 1940)

A graduate in Philosophy and Letters, he has been a teacher at Barcelona’s Theatre Institute since 1971. In 1977 he founded El Teatro Fronterizo, in Barcelona, which he directed until 1997. From 1988 to 1997, he directed the Sala Beckett in Barcelona, which was the headquarters of El Teatro Fronterizo. He has taught courses, seminars and workshops on Textual Dramaturgy, Acting Dramaturgy, Dramaturgy of Narrative Texts and Dramatic Writing in some fifteen Spanish cities, in France, Italy and Portugal, and in nearly all the countries of Latin America. He has published essays and articles on theatrical theory and education in different magazines, the majority of which are contained in La escena sin límites. Fragmentos de un discurso teatral (Ñaque Editora, Ciudad Real, 2002). In 2003 the same publisher published Dramaturgia de Textos Narrativos, which explains his methodology on the theatricalisation of stories. As a theatrical director, he has staged works by Cervantes, Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Molière, Racine, Shakespeare, Pirandello, Chekhov, Strindberg, O’Neill, Cocteau, Anouilh, Brecht, Brossa, Beckett and Mayorga, as well as his own dramatic adaptations of narrative texts by Joyce, Kafka, Melville, Sábato, Beckett, Cortázar, Buzzatti, etc. He has also directed many of his own works. He has translated Anouilh, Cocteau, Giraudoux, Claudel, Achard, Beckett, Josep M. Benet i Jornet and Pere Peyró. His texts have been performed all around Spain and many of them have been translated, premiered and/or performed in France, Germany, England, Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Russia, Slovenia, Denmark, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the former Czechoslovakia, Turkey and Lithuania. His works are regularly performed in different countries around Latin America. Among the different prizes he has won, highlights include the “Carlos Arniches” Theatre Prize (1968), the National Theatre Prize (1990), the Barcelona Theatre Institute’s Prize of Honour (1996), the “Max” Prize for the Best Author (1998 and 1999), the National Prize for Dramatic Literature (2003) and the “Life Achievement Award” at the 23rd International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami (2008).
Among the many plays he has written, highlights include Terror y miseria en el primer franquismo (four escenes, 1979), La noche de Molly Bloom, from James Joyce’s Ulisses (1979), Ñaque o De piojos y actores (1980), Carta de la Maga a bebé Rocamadour, from Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (1985), Pervertimento y otros Gestos para nada [short plays] (1986), ¡Ay, Carmela! (1986), Perdida en los Apalaches (1990), Valeria y los pájaros (1992), El cerco de Leningrado (1993), El lector por horas (1996), La raya del pelo de William Holden (1998), Sangre lunar (2001), Flechas del ángel del olvido (2004), Vagas noticias de Klamm (2009) Éramos tres hermanas (2014), Bartolomé encadenado (2014), Sueños y visiones de Ricardo III (2014) and Una artista del sueño (2015).