Caridad Svich
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Caridad Svich is an award-winning US Latina playwright, songwriter/lyricist, translator and editor known for her critique of the American dream and media culture, her adaptations of ancient Greek texts, and free linguistic and visual mix of Latino and American cultures . She has written over forty full-length plays and fifteen translations as well as a number of other shorter works. Her key full-length plays include Any Place But Here, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Iphigenia...a rave fable, Fugitive Pieces, The Tropic of X, Lucinda Caval, Magnificent Waste, Prodigal Kiss, Thrush, Luna Park, and Twelve Ophelias. She is co-creator and co-author (with Todd Cerveris and Nick Philippou) of the multimedia piece The Booth Variations, which was produced at 59 East 59 Street in New York City and 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. Her plays have been staged across the US and abroad at diverse venues including The Women's Project in New York City, 7 Stages in Atlanta, Salvage Vanguard in Austin, Pearl Theatre in New York City, Cincinnati Playhouse, artheater in Cologne (Germany), and Hackney Empire Studio Theatre in London, and ASK Theater Projects in Los Angeles. Her work has been directed by Maria Irene Fornes, Michael John Garces, Nick Philippou, Annie Dorsen, Lisa Peterson, Lear deBessonet, Jason Neulander, George Ferencz, Lance Gharavi and Annie Castledine, among many others.
Her work has been seen also at the Royal Court Theatre in London, Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Actors Touring Company/UK at the 2000 Euripides Festival in Monodendri, Greece, Seattle Repertory Theatre/Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival, Portland Stage's Little Festival of the Unexpected, Center Stage's First Look Series in Baltimore, and the Lark Theatre in New York City. Her awards include NEA/TCG Playwriting Residency at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre, TCG/PEW National Theatre Artist Residency at INTAR, Rosenthal New Play Prize at Cincinnati Playhouse, 2007 Whitfield Cook Prize for New Writing at New Dramatists, 2003 National Latino Playwriting Award, Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University, Jonathan R. Reynolds Playwright in Residence at Denison University, and Thurber House Fellow at Ohio State University. As a translator, her chief work is the English-language translation of plays and poems by Federico Garcia Lorca. She has also translated and adapted works by Calderon de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Antonio Buero Vallejo and contemporary dramatists Veronica Musalem, Abilio Estevez, and Silvia Pelaez.
She is editor of Trans-Global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries, a book of conversations on media, language, culture and performance with established and emerging artists such as Richard Foreman, Tim Etchells, Rinde Eckert, Marianne Weems, Phelim McDermott and Stephen J. Bottoms (Manchester University Press), and Divine Fire: Eight Contemporary Plays Inspired by the Greeks which includes works by Charles L. Mee, Jr., Sarah Ruhl, Karen Hartman and Ruth Margraff (BackStage Books). She is co-editor of Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/o Theatre and Performance which includes works by Luis Alfaro, Migdalia Cruz, Coco Fusco and Naomi Iizuka (TCG Publications), Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes (Smith & Kraus), and Theatre in Crisis? which includes essays by Peter Sellars, Claire MacDonald, Peter Lichtenfels, Max Stafford-Clark, Phyllis Nagy, Roberta Levitow and Goat Island (Manchester University Press). She is frequent contributor to several notable journals including American Theatre, PAJ, Performance Research, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, The Brooklyn Rail, The Dramatist and HotReview.org. She has taught playwriting at Yale School of Drama, Bennington College, and Rutgers University-New Brunswick among others.
She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport, an international theatre alliance and press, contributing editor of international theatre journal TheatreForum, and on the editorial team of Contemporary Theatre Review (Routledge/UK). Her plays are published by Playscripts Inc., Smith & Kraus, TCG Publications, Stage and Screen, The Village Voice online, Arte Publico Press, Kendall-Hunt, Salvage Vanguard Press, Alexander Street Press, and Lulu.com. Some of her translations are published in Federico Garcia Lorca: Impossible Theater (Smith and Kraus), and Lorca Major Plays Volume I and Lorca: Major Plays Volume II (NoPassport Press). She holds an MFA in Playwriting from UCSD. Her work is archived at the University of Miami (Florida) Cuban/Latino Theater Digital Collection and the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University. Her website is www.caridadsvich.com
[edit] References
- Manzor, Lillian. "Caridad Svich." Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, Volume 1. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005 (184-6);
- Maguire, Matthew. "The Pleasure of Motion." TheatreForum No. 21, San Diego: University of California-San Diego, 2002;
- Urban, Ken. "Contemporary American Playwriting, The Issue of Legacy," PAJ 84, John Hopkins Press, September 2006;
