SPAIN: Juan Mayorga, a renowned Spanish litterateur and theatre genius, has just been awarded the prestigious Princess of Letters Award for his dramatic prowess, lucidity, and profundity of content.
His dramatic work has transcended national barriers to be translated into more than thirty languages and be performed in iconic theatres on five continents.
His literature has gained a critical scholarship, with critical editions studied in universities and institutes. Madrid theatre season is incomplete without performances of Mayorga’s works.
Mayorga is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. He was elected on April 12, 2018, and assumed his position by delivering a speech entitled ‘Silence’.
“In my induction speech before the Royal Spanish Academy, the house of words, I speculated on the fantasy that the person delivering it might not be its author, but an actor representing me. After all, it was a speech about the theatre and, within it, going beyond words, about what belongs first and foremost to the actor: silence,” he said.
Mayorga has been a true academian. From being a mathematics professor at university centres and secondary schools in Madrid, he went to conduct playwriting workshops and conferences on theatre and philosophy in several countries.
The Spanish dramatist’s short theatrical pieces have been collected and compiled in a single book entitled ‘Theatre for Minutes’ including popular performances like ‘Fatal Widow Kolakowski Concert’, ‘The Golden Man’, ‘The Bad Image’, ‘Legión’, ‘The Guardian’, ‘The Skin’, ‘Yellow’, ‘The Crack’, ‘The woman of my life’, and so on. The list is endless.
Mayorga has also undertaken projects on the theatrical representation of classical texts like Euripedes’s ‘Hécuba’, Lope de Vega’s ‘Fuente Ovejuna’, ‘King Lear’ (William Shakespeare), ‘Don Juan Tenorio’ (José Zorrilla), ‘Woyzeck ‘ (Georg Büchner), ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ (Fyodor Dostoevsky), ‘An Enemy of the People’ (Henrik Ibsen), ‘Platonov’ (Anton Chekhov), ‘Before the Law’ (Franz Kafka), ‘Divine Words’ (Ramón María del Valle-Inclán) and ‘The visit of the old lady’ (Friedrich Dürrenmatt).
The playwright genius has won numerous accolades for his revolutionary contribution to Spanish literature and the performing arts, including Europe New Theatrical Realities (2016), National Theatre (2007), National Dramatic Literature (2013), National Letters Teresa de Ávila (2016), Valle-Inclán (2009), Ceres (2013), La Barraca a las Artes Escénicas (2013), Ojo Critico de Radio Nacional (2000) and Max for best author (2006, 2008 and 2009) and for best adaptation (2008 and 2013).
To this overwhelming number of literary awards for his achievements, the 2022 Princess of Letters award also made it to his mantel. Mayorga has succeeded French writer and journalist Emmanuel Carrère in the list of previous winners of this award.
Also Read: Haruki Murakami: Totem Of Modern Japanese Literature
