The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Uruguayan Plays

by Gabriel Calderón, Jimena Márquez, Sandra Massera, Marianella Morena, Josefina Trías

Overview

The rich and varied 21st-century playwriting scene of Uruguay is showcased in this eclectic and fascinating collection, bringing together the work of established figures with that of provocative emerging artists, all published in English for the first time.

Spanning several generations, the six award-winning dramatists featured in this volume are leading figures in shaping Uruguay's vibrant contemporary theatre landscape. Rooted in their experiences in Uruguay, while also looking out to the world beyond, their plays encompass styles ranging from realism to autofiction, and engage with themes including the challenges of parenthood, the search for identity, the legacies of Uruguay's literary giants, the processes and risks of making art, the limits between fiction and reality, and violence against women in contemporary society.

The result of extensive research by co-editors Sophie Stevens and William Gregory, and featuring a comprehensive introduction by Stevens and foreword by translator and academic Adam Versényi, The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Uruguayan Plays offers an insight into a new-writing ecology of extraordinary range and depth that resonates far beyond the Río de la Plata.

In Ana Versus Death by Gabriel Calderón, translated by Stephen Brown, the eponymous protagonist embarks on a dangerous mission to save her son's life when he is diagnosed with cancer; in They All Sleep at Siesta Time by Leonor Courtoisie, translated by William Gregory, three young friends take a road-trip across rural Uruguay to rescue a dying armadillo and, perhaps, themselves; in Basic Notions for the Construction of Bridges by Jimena Márquez, translated by Catherine Boyle, a group of actors struggles to devise a play in honour of the revered Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti; in I Will Give You Verses, Not Children by Marianella Morena, translated by Kate Eaton, the life and death of pioneering poet Delmira Agustini is the starting-point for an exploration of ongoing misogyny; in Prelude to Anne by Sandra Massera, translated by Rachel Toogood, a playwright wrestles with the responsibility of writing a play about Anne Frank, and in Emotional Terror by Josefina Trías, translated by Sophie Stevens, a break-up leads a dramatist to delve into the writing process itself, and its capacity to heal.

This anthology has been published within the framework of the IDA Translation Support Programme.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350525320
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	08/21/2025
Series:	Methuen Drama Play Collections
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	544 KB

About the Author

Sophie Stevens is Lecturer in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Institute of Languages Cultures and Societies, University of London. As a theatre translation researcher and practitioner, she has published with Bloomsbury Academic, Legenda and John Murray Press.

William Gregory is a translator and dramaturg whose other publications with Bloomsbury include Selected Plays by Cuban Playwright Abel González Melo, The Uncapturable by Rubén Szuchmacher, and The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Plays.
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).
Leonor Courtoisie is a theatre artist and writer. She is a graduate of the Escuela Multidisciplinaria de Arte Dramático Margarita Xirgu and the Universidad de la República, Montevideo, where she completed a BA in Playwriting, and of the Diploma in Creative Writing at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 2019 she received the Premio Molière, awarded by the French Embassy in Uruguay. She was resident at the Cité International des Arts, Paris, in 2022, and has been a member since 2019 of the Directors Lab at the Lincoln Center, New York. Her credits as a playwright and director include Estudio para La mujer desnuda (Study for The Naked Woman,
Comedia Nacional, Montevideo, 2022) and Casi sin pedir permiso (Almost without Asking Permission, Montevideo, 2019), among others. Her published works include the play Corte de obsidiana (Obsidian Cut, 2017), the poetry collection Todas esas cosas siguen vivas (All Those Things are Still Alive, 2020), and the novel Irse yendo (Leave, Going, 2021).
Sophie Stevens is Lecturer in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Institute of Languages Cultures and Societies, University of London. As a theatre translation researcher and practitioner, she has published with Bloomsbury Academic, Legenda and John Murray Press.
William Gregory has been translating plays since 2003. He has translated over 100 plays, many of them new works, for theatres and organisations including Royal Court Theatre, the BBC, the Old Vic and the Edinburgh International Festival, and performed around the world. Find out more at www.williamgregory.co.uk.
Stephen Brown translates from German, French and Spanish into English and completed the MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia with Distinction. He is interested in translating contemporary fiction, including theatre plays, as well as non-fiction. His translation of Luis Edoardo Torres's play On the Edge (En la margen del río) was performed at the 2022 Out of the Wings festival (Omnibus Theatre, London) and published in 2023 by Inti Press. He currently translates alongside his full time job as a technology manager for a London-based charity.
Catherine Boyle is Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at King's College London. She was a co-founder of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. She is the director of the Ibero-American theatre and translation collective, Out of the Wings. She is a translator of Spanish and Spanish American theatre and poetry. Her translations have been performed internationally and she has published widely on
questions of Latin American cultural and gender studies and translation. She is the
Director of the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking which is dedicated to regenerating and transforming approaches to teaching and research in Modern Languages.
Rachel Toogood is a freelance producer and translator. She has translated two plays by Laura Rubio Galletero: Shopping Centre Paradise was featured at the 2021 Out of the Wings festival (Omnibus Theatre, London) and later published by Inti Press; The Glass Ceiling: Anne&Sylvia was published by Estreno Contemporary Spanish Plays (Pace University, USA). Her other translations include La Distancia for the theatre company La Société de la Mouffette (Spain) and, forthcoming, a Cuban reimagining of The Bacchae by Raquel Carrió and Flora Lauten. Her other translation projects include working with Manchester International Festival and Jewish Book Week, and translating the lyrics of the Cuban singer and dancer Omara Portuondo. She is the co-translator of Rongo, The Forgotten Story of Easter Island by Patricia Štambuk. As a producer Rachel has worked on several translation projects for theatre companies such as the Royal Court, Foreign Affairs, Modern Culture and Performing International Plays. She is a member of the Ibero-American theatre and translation collective, Out of the Wings.
Kate Eaton is a UK-based literary translator, theatre practitioner and researcher. She has been a member of the Ibero-American theatre and translation collective, Out of the Wings, since 2016, and has translated a wide variety of plays from Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, and Spain amongst other countries, including multiple works by the renowned twentieth-century Cuban playwright Virgilio Piñera. She holds an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia and a PhD in Collaborative Translation Practices and Cuban Theatre from Queen Mary, University of London. She participated as a translator on the 2022-24 Royal Court-Autonomous University of Mexico new playwriting project, and is currently co editing an anthology of Cuban and diasporic adaptations of Ancient Greek theatre.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Adam Versényi
Introduction by Sophie Stevens

Ana Versus Death by Gabriel Calderón, translated by Stephen Brown
They All Sleep at Siesta Time by Leonor Courtoisie, translated by William Gregory
Basic Principles for the Construction of Bridges by Jimena Márquez, translated by Catherine Boyle
Prelude to Anne by Sandra Massera, translated by Rachel Toogood
I Will Give You Verses, Not Children by Marianella Morena, translated by Kate Eaton
Emotional Terror by Josefina Trías, translated by Sophie Stevens

Editorial Reviews

Curated by Sophie Stevens, one of the foremost scholars and translators of Uruguayan theatre, and William Gregory, foremost translator and dramaturg of Latin American theatre, this collection of 21st century Uruguayan playwrights is long overdue and most welcome. The range of renowned playwrights, most of them female-identified, internationally produced and hailed, and the diversity of approaches and themes undertaken makes this a collection that practitioners and scholars will return to again and again for illumination and inspiration.” —Olga Sanchez Saltveit, Middlebury College

From the Publisher