Rafael Acevedo

Rafael Acevedo was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1960.  He was director of the journal Filo de Juego (1983-1987), one of the main publications of Puerto Rico’s poetic generation of the 1980s.  He has published several volumes of poetry: Contracanto de los superdecidores (1982), El retorno del ojo pródigo (1986), Libro de islas (1989) e Instrumentario (1996).  His poems have been included in many anthologies, including Antología de poesía puertorriqueña (1993); Mal(h)ab(l)ar, (1996), El límite volcado (2000) y Los nuevos caníbales, vol. 2: la más reciente poesía del Caribe hispano (2003).  His novel Exquisito cadáver was a winner in the Casa de las Américas contest (Cuba, 2001) and was published the same year by Editorial Callejón.  For more than a decade he edited En Rojo, the cultural supplement to the weekly Puerto Rican journal Claridad.  He has written works for theatre such as Tres pájaros en una rama (1990), Crónica natural (1991) y Aló quién llama (1994), which have been staged in Puerto Rico, Colombia, New York and Philadelphia.  He is a member of the steering committee of the Yerbabruja theatre studio.  He currently teaches languages and literature at the Universidad de Puetro Rico in Río Piedras.

Carlos Canales

Carlos Canales was born in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico in 1955.  He graduated from the Universidad de Puerto Rico with degrees in Political Science, Drama and Education.  The INTAR group of New York awarded him a scholarship to study advanced playwriting.  He is Professor of Acting and Playwriting at the Escuela Especializada de Bellas Artes de Arecibo.  A past president of the National Society of Dramatic Authors, he has received various prizes for his work in the arts and education.  He has premiered over 25 works: María del Rosario, La casa de los inmortales, Juego peligroso, Vórtice, Vamos a seguir bailando, Especialmente para tí, Margie, Me gustan las películas de Charles Bronson, Se formó la rumba, Ecuajey, Bony and Kin, among others.  His works have been presented in the U.S., Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Mexico and Peru.  Renewing the comedy’s critical tradition initiated by Aristophanes in ancient Greece, the satirical works of Carlos Canales reveal the contradictions characteristic of modernity, brought on by the chaotic confusion of values and anti-values.

Migdalia Cruz

Migdalia Cruz, a New York City native, holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting from Columbia University.  One of the most prominent Latina playwrights in the United States, Cruz is the author of over thirty plays, musicals and operas.  Cruz's work has been produced by Playwrights Horizons; INTAR; Brooklyn Academy of Music; En-Garde Arts; New York Shakespeare Festival's Festival Latino; Theater for the New City; W.O.W. Cafe (New York); Foro Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Mexico City); Old Red Lion (London); and Latino Chicago Theater Company.  Her plays include Miriam's Flower, Lucy Loves Me, Dreams of Home and Whistle, as well as the musicals Rushing Water, Welcome Back to Salamanca and When Galaxy Six and The Bronx Collide.  In 1996 her play Another Part of the House received support from the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays.  She was a Playwriting Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991 and 1996, and a 1988 McKnight Fellow.  In 1997 Cruz was Sackler Artist-in-Residence at UConn’s School of Fine Arts.

Reynaldo Disla was born in Cotuí, Dominican Republic, and studied at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.  He is among the pioneers of street theatre and puppetry in the Dominican Republic.  Among his many award-winning works are Bolo Francisco (1985, Casa de las Américas Theatre Prize), La muerte aplaudida (1989, Casa de Teatro Theatre Contest), and El afanoso escribano Baltasar López de Castro (1999, Cristóbal de Llerena National Theatre Prize).  His work Función de hastío was selected by the organization Casa del Escritor Dominicano as the best theatre book published in the country in 1993.  He has represented his country at numerous theatre events and festivals throughout Latin America.  Disla has directed approximately thirty works and has acted in over forty productions, in addition to writing for film, radio and television.  He teaches Dramaturgy and Theatre Genres at the Escuela Nacional de Arte Dramático.

Cristina Escofet

Cristina Escofet is from Argentina, where she has taught Philosophy and French.  She has completed studies in Acting and Dance.  She participated in playwriting workshops led by Osvaldo Dragún and Eduardo Rovner.  Her work in theatre is extensive.  She began in 1982 with Apuntes sobre la forma, and her most recent work is 2002’s Nunca te prometí un jardín de rosas.  In the intervening twenty years she has also published Las valijas de Ulises, Solas en la madriguera, Nunca usarás medias de seda, Señoritas en Concierto, Las que aman hasta morir and Fridas, among others.  She has won three prizes: in 1995, the Faja de Honor of the Argentine Society of Writers for her complete works for theatre; in the same year, Honorable Mention in the Municipal Theatre Prize; and in 2000, First Prize in the Argentores-NYU Contest.  The first volume of her complete works for theatre was published in 1994, and in 2000 a National Scholarship from the Arts Fund made possible the publication of Arquetipos, modelos para desarmar, palabras desde el género.  Escofet has also written stories, two novels, a short novel and poetry for children.  She has given conferences in Argentina and abroad over a period of ten years, and has also worked in television.

Mercedes Farriols

Mercedes Farriols is an author, actress and educator.  She has written 17 theatre works, three novels, stories, essays, articles on theatre and television scripts.  In 2004 her work Encarnación premiered in cities around the world.  In 2000 she received the Argentores Prize in recognition of her work in the area of comic theatre.  She has studied with Darío Fo and Vittorio Gassman.  She starred in one of the Vagina Monologues as part of an international campaign to eliminate violence against women and girls.  She holds the title of Professor of Scriptwriting at the ISER (Instituto Superior de Radio y Difusión en la República Argentina) and is a frequent participant in festivals in Latin America, Europe and the U.S.   For six years she has received scholarships from the French government and from the Universitá degli Studi di Milano.  She speaks Italian, French and English.  Her work circulates throughout Argentina, America and Europe.  Currently she is writing her first film script.

Héctor Levy-Daniel

Héctor Levy-Daniel, a native of Buenos Aires, is the author of numerous works for theatre, including Rommer, los últimos crímenes (1994), Memorias de Praga (1996, winner of the FAIGA Prize awarded at the 23rd International Book Fair in Buenos Aires), Instrucciones para el manejo de las marionetas (1998), La noche del impostor (1999), Serena danza del olvido (2000, honorable mention at the TRAMOYA contest held at Mexico’s Universidad Veracruzana), El archivista (2001, “Teatro por la identidad” theatre cycle), and Los insensatos (2001, honorable mention at the “Casa de Teatro” competition in the Dominican Republic).  He has directed his own and other works, and is the founder and organizer of the “9 (nueve)” theatre cycle celebrated annually in Buenos Aires.  Levy-Daniel teaches acting in the Centro Cultural General San Martín and in private schools.

Eduardo Machado

Eduardo Machado was born in Cuba and emigrated to the U.S. when he was eight years old.  He started his acting career in Los Angeles as part of an ensemble that presented the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, while studying playwriting with María Irene Fornes.  An early one-act play earned him a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Machado is the author of over 25 plays, including Havana is Waiting, an autobiographical account of the author’s return to Cuba after forty years in exile.  He is also a director for stage and screen, having written and directed the feature film Exiles in New York (1999).  In 2001, his play When the Sea Drowns in Sand was staged at the Humana Festival, and his play Broken Eggs was performed by Repertorio Español in Havana, Cuba in 1999.  This was the first time Cuban-Americans had been invited to perform in Cuba since 1961.  Machado is currently Associate Professor of Theatre at Columbia University. 

Enrique Mijares studied accounting at the Universidad Juárez de Durango and earned a Master’s Degree in Education with a specialization in the humanities at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey.  He has been Professor of Theatre at the Universidad de Durango since 1982.  In 1977 he was the founding director of the Espacio Vacío workshop, with which he has staged around a hundred works in cities throughout Mexico and abroad.  He has written several books on theatre, among them La realidad virtual del teatro mexicano, El juego de las miradas fijas, Cantidad cero, Los cabos sueltos y Convidado de piedra.  As a playwright he has received the Emilio Carballido Prize (1995) for his work El árbol de la esperanza, based on the sculpture of the painter Frida Kahlo; the Manuel Acuña Prize (1996) for Le pusieron precio a su cabeza, in which he analyzes the greatness and the dark side of the historical figure of Francisco Villa; and the Tirso de Molina Prize (1997) for the work Enfermos de esperanza, whose theme is the neo-Zapatista revolution on Chiapas.

Luis Mario Moncada

Ricardo Pérez Quitt was born in Atlixco, Puebla, in 1958.  He is a playwright, critic and theatre scholar.  He studied theatre in Mexico and Europe.  He joined the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte of the CNCA in 2000.  He has published works of historical research: Xelhua and Historia del Teatro en Puebla Siglos XVI a XX, among others.  Currently he edits the journal Autores: teoría y práctica teatral, and is an instructor at the Colegio Libre de Estudios Teatrales de Puebla.

Roberto Ramos-Perea

Roberto Ramos-Perea, a native of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, completed studies at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and the Universidad de Puerto Rico before embarking on his career as an author, director, actor, journalist and critic.  He has written over thirty works for the stage, including the trilogy Revolución en el infierno, comprised of Revolución en el infierno, Revolución en el purgatorio o Módulo 104 (1983, René Marqués Theatre Prize), and Cueva de ladrones o Revolución en el paraíso (1984, René Marqués Theatre Prize).  Many of these works, including Miénteme más (1991, Tirso de Molina Prize awarded by Spain’s Institute for Iberoamerican Cooperation), are collected in his book Teatro Secreto.  His works have been presented throughout Latin America , in Spain and in the United States, and – in the case of Avatar (1998) – in Japan.  Twice the recipient of the Bolívar Pagán Prize, Puerto Rico’s national journalism award, Ramos-Perea is the author of two books on the history of Puerto Rican theatre: Historia de la Nueva Dramaturgia Puertorriqueña (1968-1987) and Manuel Alonso Pizarro y el Teatro de los artesanos puertorriqueños negros (1871-1906).  He served for many years as Executive Director of the Ateneo de Puerto Rico, the country’s oldest cultural institution.

Eduardo Rovner

Eduardo Rovner was born in Argentina.  Among the prizes he has received are the Casa de las Américas Prize, the First and Second National Prizes for Playwriting, the Argentores Prize on three occasions, the ACE Prize, as well as the Teatro XXI, Florencio de Uruguay, Buenos Aires Municipal and Estrella de Mar prizes.  He is the author of over twenty five works, produced in different countries, including Volvió una noche,Almas gemelas, Cuarteto, Compañía, Lejana tierra mía, Teodoro y la luna, Sueños de náufrago, La mosca blanca, Y el mundo vendrá and Concierto de aniversario.  His works have been published in three volumes by Editorial De la Flor, and by many other international publishers and journals.  Director of the Strategic Cultural Plan of the city of Buenos Aires, a member of MATe (Movement in Support of Theatre), founder and Vice President of the Carlos Somigliana Foundation which directs Theatre of the People, he represented Theatre on the National Council on Culture.  He is professor of Creativity and runs the Playwriting Workshop at the Escuela Nacional de Arte Dramático, and professor of Playwriting in the Master’s program in Argentine and Latin American Theatre at the University of Buenos Aires.  He has served as Vice President of the twelve International Congresses on Iberoamerican and Argentine Theatre.  A former General and Artistic Director of the San Martín Municipal Theatre, Rovner remains intensely active as a professor of Playwriting and theorist, publishing in various journals and participating in national and international congresses.

Guillermo Schmidhuber

Guillermo Schmidhuber de la Mora (México City, 1943) is a playwright and academic.  He has taught courses at universities in the U.S. and Mexico, and given over a hundred conferences on four continents.  He holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati.  He belongs to the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores de México.  Currently he is a researcher at the Universidad de Guadalajara.  His dramatic work includes nearly thirty titles, premiered in Mexico and abroad.  He is the author of forty books, published in Germany, Holland, Spain, the U.S., Chile, Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico.  Some of the honors he has received include: the Nezahualcóyotl medal of the Mexican Society of Writers (SOGEM, 1978) for La catedral humana; the National Fine Arts Prize in Literature, theatre genre, and the López Velarde Prize awarded by the government of Zacatecas, both for Los herederos de Segismundo (1980); his piece Por las tierras de Colón earned the University of Miami’s Golden Letters Prize, the highest distinction awarded to Hispanic writers in the U.S. (1987).  In 1995 he received the José Vasconcelos Prize for his contributions to the Hispanic community.  Also in 1995 he was awarded the Alfonso Reyes National Essay Prize, sponsored by the state government of Nuevo León and CONACULTA.  His works have been translated into German, French and English.