Maruxa Vilalta is a Mexican playwright and a theatre director.
Her plays have been translated, published and produced in numerous countries. She has won the critic’s prize for the best play of the year ten times.
In November 2010 she was awarded the National Prize for Arts and Sciences in the field of Linguistics and Literature, for her work which has national and international resonance. President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa gave her the award at the National Palace (Mexico).
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.
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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 had Mexican nationality. She received all her education in Mexico, from primary school and then six years of French baccalauréat at the Liceo Franco Mexicano. She enrolled in the School of Liberal Arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she studied for a master's degree in Spanish literature.
Vilalta started as a novelist. Her first works were El castigo (The Punishment) in 1957, Los disorientados (The Disoriented Ones), reprinted several times in 1959, and Dos colores para el paisaje (Two Colors for the Landscape) in 1961. She adapted Los disorientados for the theatre and since the first performance, in 1960, she began her career as a playwright. She only wrote dramas, excepting some short stories, among them the collection calledEl otro día, la muerte (The Other Day, Dead), in 1974, that includes Diálogos del narrador, la muerte y su invitado (Dialogues of the Narrator, Death and Her Guest), Romance con 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).
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 1980-1990 by the Women’s Association of Journalists and Writers. Claridades Honor Prize for her Outstanding Contributions to the Arts (1998). In 2001 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), which 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 "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, published in 2010 by CONACULTA (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes).
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 (Dictionary of 20th-century 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 by 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.