Javier Malpica (Playwright, OUR DAD IS IN ATLANTIS) Born in Mexico City in 1965. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree in Physics, he completes the Diploma in Literary Creation at the Writers’ School of SOGEM (The Society of Mexican Writers). He has written more than ten plays (many of them cowritten with his brother Antonio), most of which have been produced. He has received various prizes and honors for his work, including the Victor Hugo Rascón Banda Prize for Daddy’s in Atlantis. His other plays include: Letters in the Matter (winner, INBA National Prize for Theater), Seventh Round, Maria Frankenstein, Canon ((winner, Theater Prize for Young Creators), Return to Midnight (finalist, New Theater), The Last Journey (second place, Tomás Urtusástegui Prize for Theater for Young Audiences), All the Voices (Honorable Mention, Manuel Herrera Prize), The End of History (winner, New Theater), Essay of a Coma (Program of Collaborations), Mujer on the Border, Five shots in the City of Palaces. He has given courses and lectures in Mexico and abroad. He has also published and received prizes for his works of fiction for children .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Verónica Musalem Morenol (Playwright, ADELA AND JUANA) is a playwright, screenwriter and director. Her mentors include Hugo Argüelles, Juan Tovar and Adel Hakim. She holds a degree in Dramatic Literature and Theater from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UNAM, and received a scholarship to study playwriting with José Sanchis Sinisterra in Barcelona, Spain. She has received support from FONCA’s Program for Cultural Projects and Collaborations three times and has received FONCA’s Fellowship for Young Creators as well. Verónica was also invited to present her work in the “Mostra SESC de Artes Latinidades” in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her published works include: Signos Vitales (Vital Signs), Tócalo, está palpitando. (Touch it, it’s throbbing.), Eso que dicen lossueños (That which dreams say), Adela y Juana (Adela and Juana) and After Hours. Produced plays include: Signos Vitales and Eso que dicen los sueños, both of which she directed as well. Tu nombre no se ha escrito (Your name has not been written), directed by Ricardo Ramírez-Carnero, at the Teatro El Granero. She created a free adaptation of De la mañanaa la medianoche (From Morning to Midnight), by Georg Kaiser, directed by Alejandro Velis, at the Teatro El Galeón. After Hours was presented as part of the production of Cinco balas en la ciudad de los palacios (Five bullets in the city of palaces), directed by Luis Ayhllón, Teatro de la Capilla and Teatro Xavier Villaurrutia. The play Cinco balas en la Ciudad de los palacios was included in the 4th Annual International Week of Contemporary Playwriting. This same play was nominated for Best Playwriting in the category Hugo Arguelles, by APT. Verónica took part in the London’s Royal Court Theater’s playwriting project in collaboration with the Centro Cultural Helénico. She participated in the Experimental Opera Use vías alternas (Use Alternate Routes), with her piece Lazos (Bonds), in the VII Festival Internacional Música y Escena, at the Sala Miguel Covarrubias at UNAM. Her play Adela y Juana premiered at the Sala Xavier Villaurrutia, in the Centro Cultural del Bosque, directed by Alejandro Velis. She is currently working on her next opera in collaboration with the playwrights Luis Ayhllón and Javier Malpica. Her piece Chilpancingo No. 13, will be presented in a staged reading by Dramafest and the Centro cultural Helénico. The production of Chilpancingo No. 13 will open in early 2007, directed by Lidia Margules.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alberto Villarreal (Playwright, EVENTS WITH LIFE'S LEFTOVERS) was born in Mexico City in 1977, and is a writer, playwright and theatre director. He studied Dramatic Literature and Theatre at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and was awarded the Gabino Barreda Medal. He has taken specialized courses in Mexico and abroad, such as the British Council's course with Declan Donellan in Buenos Aires, and the Fundación Carolina program in Spain. He has received several writing fellowships, such as the Jóvenes Creadores grant from FONCA, and the Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas, as well as awards like "El Premio Nacional de Ensayo Teatral" (National Theatrical Essay Award). As a director, he has staged over twenty plays, including Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine, presented at the 2005 Latin American Theatre Festival and the 2004 México Puerta de las Americas Festival (where it was featured as part of Mexico's official selection), among others. As a writer, his plays have been produced and published in Mexico and other countries such as Chile and England. His work has also been part of various series, such as "Arena México," a showcase of new Mexican playwrights organized by London's Royal Court. Currently, he is the Artistic Director of Artillería Producciones and La Madriguera Theatre in Mexico City.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Viqueira (Playwright, H) has received the following Fellowships: Young Creators from FONCA (2004-2005), Fundación Carolina (Spain-2005), the National Playwriting Program 2005 (CONACULTA / INBA), The 2 nd International Encounter of Theater Schools (Fundación Akademii Teatralnej Imienia A. Zelwerowicza, Poland-2003), and the scholarship PRONABE (Fundación TELMEX y UNAM). Richard is the author and creator of Vencer al Sensei (To Vanquish the Sensei), published in Anonymous Theater and co-produced by the Teatro de la UNAM, with an extended run at La Gruta; selected for the 5ta. Semana Internacional de Dramaturgia Contemporánea, Centro Cultural Helénico and Teatro La Capilla, 2006; presented in the XX Festival Internacional de Zacatecas; the Festival del Mes del Teatro, Puerto Vallarta, 2006; the Festival de Teatro Nuevo León, agosto 2006 and the Festival de Teatro de Tijuana, September 2006).

 

 

 

 

Chantal Bilodeau (Playwright, PLEASURE AND PAIN) is a playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Canada. Her plays have been presented by Alleyway Theatre, Brass Tacks Theatre, City Theatre Company, The Lark Play Development Center, The Met Theater, Ohio University, the University of Miami, ScriptLab, and Women’s Project & Productions. She is a recipient of a Katherine Cornell Award, a winner of the TV Writer.Com script competition, and has been supported by the Association Beaumarchais and Étant Donnés: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts. Chantal is an alum of the Lark’s Playwrights’ Workshop and Women's Project & Productions' Playwrights' Lab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jorge Cortiñas (Translator, OUR DAD IS IN ATLANTIS) Jorge's many awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts; as well as the Helen Merrill Award; ³playwright of the year² in El Nuevo Herald¹s 1999 year-end list; a Writers Community Residency from the YMCA National Writer's Voice; and the Robert Chesley Award, among others. His first play MALETA MULATA was produced by Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. His second play SLEEPWALKERS was produced by the Area Stage in 1999, where it was awarded a Carbonell Award for Best New Work given by the South Florida Critics Circle. SLEEPWALKERS was further developed and remounted by the Alliance Theatre in 2002. TIGHT EMBRACE was produced by INTAR in New York, and his play BLIND MOUTH SINGING recently completed a run at Chicago's Teatro Vista, a production the 'Chicago Tribune' praised as having "visionary wit". BLIND MOUTH SINGING will be remounted by the National Asian American Theater Company in New York this Spring. His most recent play, BIRD IN THE HAND, was developed at this year's Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference. He has been commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory, and Hartford Stage. He is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, and is a member of New Dramatists and the Playwrights Coalition at MCC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andrea Thome (Translator, H) Andrea Thome is a playwright, performer and educator whose plays, dance-theater works, comedy sketches and video satires have been presented nationally and internationally. She has also created many collaborative, community-based works with young people in New York City, San Francisco, Fargo (ND) and other communities, and is currently spearheading an international Playwrights Exchange and Translation Workshop with Mexico for the Lark Play Development Center (NYC), where she is an Artistic Associate. As a playwright, Andrea’s full-length play Undone was developed by the Lark Play Development Center and presented as a BareBones development production in November 2003. The script of Undone was a finalist for the 2004 Sundance Theatre Lab. Undone was further developed at INTAR’s New Works Lab and presented there in June 2004. Her comedy Worm Girl (commissioned by Cherry Red Productions, Washington, DC) was extended for a 9-week run and called “inspired” and “irreverent” (Washington Post, 9/6/03). Other produced full-length plays include Alley Rats (Latina Playwrights Festival NYC, 2000); Pandora’s Box (Trollwood Performing Arts, Fargo, ND, commission); and Domino (San Francisco Latino Play Festival 1996). From 1994-1999, Andrea co-created 22 original works with San Francisco’s Red Rocket Theater, of which she was co-director/co-founder. She toured the Bay Area as an original company member (performer and writer) of Latina Theatre Lab (Yerba Buena Center Wattis Artists in Residence, 1998-99).

Andrea has collaborated with artists including Anna Deavere Smith, the comedy trio Culture Clash, innovative theater company Campo Santo and performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña. She is a company artist with Ariane Anthony & Co., a New York dance/theater ensemble (Joyce SoHo, Abron Arts Center, The Construction Company). She is co-founder of FULANA (www.fulana.org), a video and performance collective whose satirical pieces have been shown at the Havana Film Festival in New York, New York’s Exit Art Gallery, San Antonio’s CineFestival (winner, best short fiction), the Hemispheric Institute International Performance Conference and other film festivals and universities nationwide. FULANA is also contributing text and visual pieces to the upcoming book “Uy Cucuy: Fear of a Brown Nation” (University of Texas Press). From 2002-2006 she was a teaching artist for teenagers at El Puente, a Southside Williamsburg (Brooklyn) center for community arts and activism, where she developed five full-length theater works in collaboration with young people.

Andrea received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a graduate of Harvard College, where she created an independent major (Dramatic Literature and Performance in the Americas). She is the recipient of a Barondess Residency in Playwriting (2005); Wattis Artist-in-Residence (with Latina Theatre Lab) at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (1998-99); and a Cultural Arts Fellowship from the City of Oakland (1997). She was also a participating artist at the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation (Summer 2005) with Anton Dudley’s Flight of Kings.

Sylvia Peláez (Translator, PLEASURE AND PAIN) She is a playwright, director, theater researcher, professor and translator. In 1989 she got the First Prize in Juego Florales contest with her play La espera (Waiting). She has written 25 plays, for which she has gotten prizes and grants; some of them have had readings in New York, Chicago, Mexico City and Manila. Among her staged plays are La Bolivariada (Bolivar’s Journey); Luna de sangre (Moon of Blood); Morir de risa (Death by Laugh); El vampiro deLondres, (The London Vampire); El guayabo peludo (The Hairy Guava Tree), Linares el detective (Linares the Detective); Susurros de inmortalidad (Whispers of Immortality), Érszebet, la bañista de la tina púrpura (Érszebet, the Purple Tub Bather). In the last semester of 2006, her play Fiebre 107 grados (Fever at 107 Degrees, developed and translated at The Lark Play Development Center) will be staged and produced by the National Theater Company of Mexico. She has gotten the grants: Mexico Center for Writers, Young Writers, and Cultural Contact by Mexico-US Fund for Culture, Gateways Program at San Antonio, Texas, artistic residences at Ragdale Foundation by FONCA and NEA, The Writers Room at New York. In 2006, she translated the first version of Pleasure and Pain by Chantal Bilodeau presented in staged reading at the Playwrights International Week in Mexico City. For her work in Mexican theater she has appeared in Writers Dictionary of the Mexican Center for Writers; Mexican Writers Dictionary of the Bibliographic Research Institute , unam; and the Hispanic Encyclopedia . She is the Coordinator of the Performing Arts Project for Mexico-North Research Network, Inc. (Washington) and honorary member of the Theater Commission of the General Society of Mexican Writers ( SOGEM). She has designed “Show Producer” for the University Claustro de Sor Juana. She has been jury and tutor in many contests and grant programs. In recent times she has been traveling to teach playwrighting. Today she is working on her plays Love Experiment and Ciudad Juárez Murders. www.dramaturgiamexicana.co