Rodolfo Usigli Wainer (November 17, 1905 – June 18, 1979) was a Mexican playwright, essayist, and diplomat. He has been called "the father of Mexican theater" and "playwright of the Mexican Revolution." In recognition of his work to articulate a national identity for Mexican theater, he was award the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes (Mexican National Prize for Arts and Sciences) in 1972.

Biography

Usigli was born to an Italian father and a Polish mother in Mexico City. In his early childhood, he enjoyed many plays to which his parents took him. His father aspired for him to go to music school, and Usigli spent a year in the National Conservatory of Music before deciding that his real passion was theater. He studied drama at the Yale School of Drama from 1935-1936 on a Rockefeller scholarship, later becoming a professor and diplomat. During his time as a diplomat in 1945, he met George Bernard Shaw in London. After returning to Mexico from the U.S., he established the Midnight Theater and also became a member of the literary circle that formed around the journal Contemporary. During the 1930s, he directed radio dramas.

Theatre

Usigli’s theatre focuses largely the history of Mexico and satirizing his contemporary Mexican society,

Usigli designed strong female characters in several of his plays. Two of Usigli's protégées, Rosario Castellanos and Luisa Josefina Hernández, became important female voices on the Mexican stage. He was also a strong influence on his pupil Jorge Ibargüengoitia and on Josefina Niggli.

Archive

The Rodolfo Usigli Archive in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections at Miami University of Ohio is a repository of Usigli's papers. The archive's website describes it as "the definitive research collection relating to Usigli's life and career, including correspondence, both manuscript and typed drafts of original plays and translations of works by other artists, personal, theatrical, and diplomatic photographs, essays, books, playbills, posters, theses written about Usigli, awards, newspaper and magazine articles, memorabilia, and ephemera."

  • El niño y la niebla (The Boy and the Mist), 1936
  • Otra primavera (Another Spring)
  • Los fugitivos, produced 1950, published 1951
  • Jano es una muchacha, 1952
  • "Sonetos del tiempo y de la muerte" ("Sonnets of Time and Death"), 1954
  • "Tiempo y memoria en conversación desesperada", 1981

Novels

  • Ensayo de un crimen (Rehearsal for a Crime), 1944
  • Obliteracion (Obliteration) (1973)

Nonfiction

  • México en el teatro (Mexico in Theatre), 1932
  • Caminos del teatro en México (Paths of the Theatre in Mexico), 1933
  • Anatomía del teatro (Anatomy of Theatre), written 1939, published 1967
  • Itinerario del autor dramático (Itinerary of a Dramatist), 1940
  • Juan Ruiz de Alarcón en el tiempo, 1967
  • Ideas sobre el teatro (Ideas about the Theatre), 1968
  • Imagen y prisma de México (1972)

Memoirs

  • Conversaciónes y encuentros (Conversations and Encounters), 1974
  • translated into English in a critical edition as You Have Nothing to Learn from Me: A Literary Relationship Between George Bernard Shaw and Rodolfo Usigli, 2011
  • Rodolfo Usigli website at Miami University of Ohio
  • The Rodolfo Usigli Archive in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections at Miami University of Ohio
  • Rodolfo Usigli website at biblioteca Cervantes Virtual

References