“I was always very revolutionary. My theater was always avant-garde. In those times, there was a terrible kind of theater, of a level that overwhelmed me. I didn't want to do that kind of theater, so I started doing aggressive plays. Everyone said I had discovered a new world in Mexican theater, they encouraged me, and I took off.”
Maruxa Vilalta (1932-2014) was born to two lawyer parents in Barcelona – where her mother was the first woman to graduate from the law school. They moved to Mexico at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. She wrote numerous novels and plays, tackling themes such as miscommunication, the desire for escape, political criticism, and protest against social injustice.
Her 1964 play A Happy Country (Un País Feliz) was on our 2021 list and will be featured in an upcoming reading at the Brooklyn Public Library!
Maruxa Vilalta Quick Facts
🏆 Received numerous of awards, including:
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award for Best Work of 1975 - honoring books written in Spanish by a female author (and named after fellow ETC Playwright)
Mexico’s National Prize for Linguistics and Literature in 2010
🎭 Wrote over FIFTEEN plays
✍ Her work has been translated into at least FIVE languages
📆 Wrote for over 51 years (including 48 years that included playwrighting)
👵 Helped initiate Día de la Mujer Mexicana or Mexican Women’s Day on the 15th of February
Quote from Playwright and Theater Director Tomás Urtusástegui
“[Maruxa Vilalta] was very outstanding in theater; her plays were popular for a long time, and then suddenly she was forgotten. She deserves to be honored, because her work remains relevant. She was concerned about society, about social ethics.”
Don’t miss the reading of A Happy Country (Un País Feliz) on December 8th @ Brooklyn Public Library for Arts & Culture
A Happy Country (Un País Feliz) follows the recently impoverished Jiménez family in an unnamed Spanish-speaking country as complex conversations are brought to the foreground by the arrival of a tourist staying in their home. How do you balance your activism with your desire to just live? Do you fight for your family, or your country? And how do you be an ethical tourist in a culture that is not your own?
Atrium of the newly opened Library for Arts & Culture
10 Lafayette Ave (Nearby Stations: Nevins St, Atlantic Ave/Barclays, Lafayette Ave)
One Play, Two Podcast Episodes!
Dive into Maruxa Vilalta & A Happy Country through This is a Classic…
Episode 1:
Traditional This is a Classic analysis and deep dive into A Happy Country with Shannon & Skye
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Episode 2:
Insights on the play from Victoria Collado, director of the A Happy Country reading at the 2021 Expand the Canon Festival
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