THE METHUEN DRAMA BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY

Featuring the work of six playwrights published in English for the first time, this anthology showcases the contemporary playwriting of Uruguay in all its depth, vibrancy and extraordinary range.

Gabriel Calderón is a playwright, director and actor. He has written over 30 plays and has twice received the Uruguayan Ministry of Education and Culture National Literature Award. His plays have been translated into French, German, English, Italian, Catalan, Greek and Portuguese. In 2022, Ana contra la muerte won the Florencio Awards for Best Production, Best Direction, Best Leading Actress and Best Supporting Actress. In recent years he has worked increasingly in Europe, with productions at the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry (Paris), and becoming the first Uruguayan playwright to have productions at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (Barcelona) and the Teatro Nazionale di Modena (Modena, Italy). He has been the Director of the Instituto Nacional de Artes Escénicas (National Performing Arts Institute), Director of the Executive Office for the Uruguay Bicentenary, and Coordinator of University Programmes in Playwriting at the Universidad de la República, the state university of Uruguay. Between 2022 and 2025 he held the role of Artistic and Managing Director of the Comedia Nacional, the national theatre company of Uruguay.

Jimena Márquez is a standout figure in Uruguayan theatre. A professor of literature, playwright and theatre director, she has received numerous awards throughout her career. In 2022, she won the Florencio Award for Best Solo Performance by an Actress for her own play, El desmontaje (The Deconstruction). In 2019, she received the Uruguayan Ministry of Education and Culture National Literature Award for La sospechosa puntualidad de la casualidad (The Suspicious Punctuality of Chance) produced in 2017 by the Comedia Nacional. She has directed and written over 15 plays and represented Uruguay at numerous international festivals. She has directed plays on four occasions for the Comedia Nacional and has staged performances for the Montevideo Symphonic Band and for the Montevideo Philharmonic Orchestra. She has written for the Uruguay Carnival since 2008 and was voted as one of the Carnival's People of the Year in 2022. She has taught at numerous educational establishments and currently runs Teatro en el Aula (Theatre in the Classroom), a programme of theatre for young people run by the regional government of Montevideo. She is a columnist for the national newspaper, La Diaria.

Sandra Massera is an actor, playwright, educator, and theatre director. She has directed numerous plays and one opera: Rashomon. The writer of 32 plays and the libretti for four operas, she has been the recipient of Uruguay's major playwriting awards including the Florencio Award for Best Playwright on a number of occasions, the Ministry of Education and Culture National Literature Awards, the Juan Carlos Onetti Literary Awards, the COFONTE (National Theatre Foundation Commission) Award, the Museo Vivo del Títere (Living Puppet Museum) Award, the Centro Cultural de España (Cultural Centre of Spain) Award, and the FEFCA (Fund for the Promotion of Artistic Creation and Training) Award for Artistic Excellence. Her plays have been produced, translated and published in countries including Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and France. She is the founder, director and producer of the theatre company Teatro del Umbral, a team of artists who for over 25 years have represented Uruguay at international festivals, round tables, and masterclasses in several countries in Europe and the Americas.

Marianella Morena is one of Uruguay's most internationally successful theatre artists, whose work has been produced throughout Latin America and Europe. Her many international awards include the Premio Molière (awarded by the French Embassy in Uruguay), the Centro Cultural de España (Cultural Centre of Spain) Award, and the University of Buenos Aires Award (Argentina). Writer of over 30 plays to date, her works include Don Juan, El lugar del beso (Don Juan, The Place of the Kiss), Las Julietas (The Juliets), Antígona Oriental (Eastern Antigone, staged with an on-stage chorus of 20 former political prisoners), No daré hijos, daré versos (I Will Give You Verses, Not Children), Ella sobre Ella (Her on Her), Bicentenaria (Bicentenary, an intervention staged by 200 women in the public square in Lima, Peru), and Naturaleza Trans (Trans Nature, a documentary piece featuring trans women from the Uruguay-Brazil border). Published in several countries, she was in March 2024 the first-ever Latin American artist to direct at the Suomen Kansallisteatteri (Finnish National Theatre, Helsinki). As an artivist, she stages performative interventions in public spaces to call out social injustices in relation to the environment, femicide, and the sexual exploitation of minors.

Josefina Trías is an actor and playwright. She trained as an actor at the Instituto de Actuación de Montevideo (Montevideo Institute of Acting) and has performed in more than 25 plays. She is Programme Manager of the Las Piedras Cultural Centre in Comuna Canaria. Her play Terrorismo emocional (Emotional Terror) has had over 124 performances in Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. In 2020, the script won the Uruguayan Ministry of Education and Culture National Literature Award. In 2018, she received the Florencio Award for Best Solo Performance for her role as the protagonist, Clara. In 2021, she premiered Llamaste a Walter (You Called Walter), a prequel to Terrorismo emocional which won third prize in the 2022 Uruguayan Ministry of Culture National Literature Awards. Her work as a screenwriter includes the short film El mundo se ha terminado (The World Has Ended) supported by the audiovisual production fund of the Instituto Nacional de Artes Escénicas (National Performing Arts Institute), Tiempo de Amigas (Time for Friends) and, as co-writer, the second season of Encierro Demente (Crazy Lockdown).