Maruxa Vilalta

Maruxa Vilalta is a Mexican playwright and a theatrical director.

Her plays have been translated, published and produced in numerous countries. She has won the critic’s price for the best play of the year ten times. Themes such a lack of communication and escapism are linked to a political critique, protest against social injustice, and defense of the human being in the works of this author. The theater of Maruxa Vilalta gives a broader meaning to the problems of countries and their inhabitants today.

Maruxa Vilalta was born in Barcelona in 1932, daughter of lawyer Antonio Vilalta y Vidal and María Soteras Maurí, doctor of law. Antonio Vilalta, one of the great supporters for the Estatut de la Generalitat and one of the founders of Esquerra Republicana party. He was also a distinguished jurist, elected and proclaimed deputy of the Ilustre Colegio de Abogados de Barcelona. María Soteras was the first woman to graduate with a degree in law from the University of Barcelona and she was also a member of the Colegio de Abogados. In 1936, at the start of the Civil War in Spain, they went in exile to Brussels and they arrived to Mexico, by the way of New York, in 1939.

Since the age eight Maruxa has the Mexican nationality. She receives all her education in Mexico, from primary school and then six years of French baccalauréat at the Liceo Franco Mexicano. She enters the School of Liberal Arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she studies for a master´s degree in Spanish literature.

She begins to publish and becomes a noted author. She starts as a novelist: El castigo (The Punishment), 1957. Los desorientados (The Disoriented Ones), reprinted several times in 1958, and Dos colores para el paisaje (Two Colors for the Landscape), 1961. She adapts Los desorientados for the theatre and since the first performance, in 1960, she begins his career as a playwright. She only wrights theater plays, excepting some short stories, among them the collection El otro día, la muerte (The Other Day, Dead), 1974, that includes Diálogos del narrador, la muerte y su invitado (Dialogues of the Narrator, Death and Her Guest), Romance de la muerte de agua (The Romance of Watery Death), Aventura con la muerte de fuego (Adventure with Fiery Death) and Morir temprano, mientras comulga el general (To Die Early, While the General Receives Communion).

Plays by Maruxa Vilalta and awards

• Los desorientados (The Disoriented Ones) 1960)
• Un país feliz ( 1964) (A Happy country) 1964)
• Soliloquio del Tiempo (Time’s Soliloquy) 1964)
• Un día loco (A Crazy Day) 1964)
• La última letra (The Last Leter) 1964)
• Cuestión de narices (A Question of Noses) 1966). Prize for the Best Group and Best Director, Ramón Dagés, at the Manresa Theatre Festival 1974)
• Esta noche juntos, amándonos tanto (Together Tonight, Loving Each Other so Much) 1970). Juan Ruiz de Alarcón Best Play of the Year Prize, and Best Play of the Year Prize at the Las Máscaras Festival, Morelia.
• Nada como el piso 16 (Nothing Like the Sixteenth Floor) 1976) Juan Ruiz de Alarcón Best Play of the Year Prize and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Best Play of the Year Prize
• Historia de él (The Story of Him) 1978). Juan Ruiz de Alarcón Best Play of the Year Prize and El Fígaro Best Play of the Year Prize
• Una mujer, dos hombres y un balazo (A Woman, Two Men and One Bullet) 1978). It contents four one act-plays that can be staged separately: En Las Lomas, esa noche (That Night in Las Lomas), El té de los señores Mercier (Mr. and Mrs. Mercier’s Tea), El barco ebrio (The Drunken Ship), Archie & Bonnie (Archie & Bonnie)
• Pequeña historia de horror (y de amor desenfrenado) (Little Story of Horror (and Unbridled Love) 1985)
• Una voz en el desierto. Vida de San Jerónimo (A Voice in the Wilderness. The Life of Saint Jerome) Mexican Association of Theatre Critics Best Play of Creative Research Prize) 1991), Society of Theatre Journalists Prize 1991) and Claridades Best Play of the Year Prize) 1991)
• Francisco de Asís (Francis of Assisi) Mexican Assotiation of Theater Critics Best Play of Creative Research Prize) 1992)
• Jesucristo entre nosotros (Jesus Christ Among Us) 1994)
• Ignacio y los jesuitas (Ignatius and the Jesuits) 1997)
• 1 9 1 0 (1 9 1 0) 2000 and 2001)
• Con vista a la bahía (With a View of the Bay) is produced by Conaculta, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and Centro Cultural Helénico, from May to September 2007

Besides her theater plays prizes she has received the following honors: Certificate from the Mexican Institute of Culture(1963). Certificate from the Mexico City Cultural Program for the 19th Olympic Games (1968). Appointed Vice President of the College of Literature, of the Mexican Institute of Culture (1968). Literary Merit Prize, Círculo de Letras Nuevos Horizontes, Managua, Nicaragua. (1972). El 9 (Number Nine) published in the anthology The Best Short Plays 1973, compiled by Stanley Richards. Honorary Member of the Women’s Association of Journalists and Writers (1974). Named Woman of the Decade (1979-1989) by the Women’s Association of Journalists and Writers. Claridades Honor Prize for her Outstanding Contributions to the Arts (1998). The Ninth Journeys on Latin American Theater, organized by the University of Tennessee, in Puebla, Mexico, were dedicated to Maruxa Vilalta for her career as a playwright.

Maruxa Vilalta’s plays have been published and reprinted by prestigious publishing houses, among them Fondo de Cultura Económica, Consejo Nacional Para la Cultura y las Artes (National Council for Culture and Arts), Joaquín Mortiz, Planeta, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

1910 focuses on the Mexican Revolution and was produced by National Council for Culture and Arts (Conaculta), Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

In 2002 Conaculta published the book 1910 y tres obras más (1910 and Three Other Plays), wich includes 1910, Una mujer, dos hombres y un balazo (One Woman, Two Men and One Bullet), Pequeña historia de horror (y de amor desenfrenado) (Little Story of Horror (and Unbridled Love), Una voz en el desierto. Vida de San Jerónimo (The Life of Saint Jerome. A voice in the Wilderness).

Also in 2002 the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) published, in its Voz Viva series, the CD-book Antología de teatro (Anthologie of Theatre), with selections from plays of Maruxa Vilalta in the voice of the author and in published texts.

In the same year the Sociedad General de Escritores de México publishes three plays from this dramaturge in the CD Cien años de teatro mexicano (One Hundred Years of Mexican Theater).

In November 2003 Fondo de Cultura Económica publishes Antología de obras de teatro de Maruxa Vilalta (Anthology of Theatrical Works by Maruxa Vilalta) in its collection Letras Mexicanas, prologue by Felipe Garrido.

Fondo de Cultura Económica also published several plays of this author in the collections Teatro I (1972, fourth edition 1997), Teatro II (1989, second edition 1992) and Teatro III (1990, third edition 1994).

In 2006 The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, New York, publishes A Voice in the Wilderness. The Life of Saint Jerome, tanslated by Edward Huberman and Sharon Magnarelli.

Also in 2006 and 2007 Ignacio y los jesuitas is performed in El Progreso, Honduras, Lafragua Theater, stage manager Jack Warner.

In 2007 Una mujer, dos hombres y un balazo is performed in Bogotá, Colombia, produced by the Universidad Estatal, stage manager Maira Salamanca.

In 2007 Con vista a la bahía (With a View of the Bay), is performed in Mexico.

Maruxa Vilalta has also been stage manager in plays from Jean Anouilh, Albert Husson, Peter Ustinov, Ira Wallach, Arout-Chejov and, since 1970, only in her own plays. She gives theater courses, seminars and conferences in universities and cultural centers from Mexico and other countries.

Researcher María Elena Reuben, of Hofstra University, New York, has compiled a Bibliography of Maruxa Vilalta which includes the plays of this author and the major studies and academic articles on her theater as well as a selection of reviews and press commentaries.

In Pamplona the writer Eduardo Mateo has also compiled a Bibliography of Maruxa Vilalta. Also noteworthy is the recherche on the work of Maruxa Vilalta for the Diccionario de escritores mexicanos siglo XX (XX Century Dictionary of Mexican Writers), Center for Literary Studies, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Maruxa Vilalta is a member of the Pen Club, the General Society of Writers of México, the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics and the Association of Writers of Mexico, among other organizations.

Among the major essays and articles on the work of this writer are those published in Mexico by Carlos Solórzano, Luis G. Basurto, Luis de Tavira, Ramón Xirau, Efraín Huerta, Mauricio Magdaleno, Héctor Azar, Henrique González Casanova, José Ramón Enríquez, Felipe Garrido, Sergio García Ramírez, Marcela del Río, Reyna Barrera and Fernando Sánchez Mayáns; in Madrid and Venezuela by Carlos Miguel Suárez-Radillo; in Barcelona by Manuel Aznar Soler, Josep María Poblet, Joaquín Ventalló and Josep María Lladó; in Paris bv Jean and André Camp; in the United States by Sharon Magnarelli, Robert L. Bancroft, Willis Knapp Jones, J.Gaucher –Schultz and Joan Boorman; in Toronto by Kirsten F. Nigro; in Puerto Rico by Edna Coll: in Río de Janeiro by María Ramos and in Prague by Jan Makarius.

External links

• Maruxa Vilalta Web Site