Caridad Svich
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As a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator living between many cultures, including inherited ones, the idea of departure has always been not only an actual or metaphorical basis for writing the work, but also an idea made manifest through the enactment of writing, its performance, and my living of it. Born in the US of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian parents, I have felt in a strange kind of exile even while growing up as an “American.” This sense of dislocation extends to the fact that as a child and adolescent, I lived in several states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, New York, and California, not to mention many cross-country road trips in between.
The nomadic strain was thus instilled in me and has become an inevitable part of my writing vision. Explorations of wanderlust, dispossession, biculturalism, bilingualism, construction of identity, and the many different emotional terrains that can be inhabited onstage form the basis of my plays and other writing projects. Visions of migration (both physical and spiritual) dominate the plays, which have become, in turn, documents of internal diasporas.As a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator living between many cultures, including inherited ones, the idea of departure has always been not only an actual or metaphorical basis for writing the work.
Caridad Svich is a playwright-poet, screenwriter, lyricist, editor, translator, essayist and educator. They are a 2024 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in Creative Arts- Drama and Performance Art. They also received the 2023 Flora Roberts Award from The Dramatists Guild, and a 2012 Obie for Lifetime Achievement.
Their first feature film, as co-screenwriter, FUGITIVE DREAMS, is streaming on demand on Apple Tv, Amazon Prime and more. It is based on her play. It received its world premiere at the 2020 Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, US premiere at the 2020 Austin Film Festival, European premiere at the 2020 Tallinn Black Nights Festival, and subsequently at the 2021 Manchester Film Festival, 2021 Maryland Film Festival, 2021 Cinequest Fest and 2022 NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival. It was named One of the TOP TEN Festival Films of 2020 by The Austin Chronicle.
Signature works include ANY PLACE BUT HERE, 12 OPHELIAS, IPHIGENIA CRASH LAND FALLS..., ALCHEMY OF DESIRE/DEAD-MAN'S BLUES (Rosenthal New Play Prize), RED BIKE (NNPN Rolling World Premiere), GUAPA (NNPN Rolling World Premiere, and Edgerton Foundation New Play Award), SPARK ( National Latine Playwriting Award), MAGNIFICENT WASTE (National Latine Playwriting Award) and THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, based on Isabel Allende's novel (ATCA Primus Prize).
Her second independent feature film ABILENE (as sole screenwriter, based on her play) has been an official selection at various international independent feature film festivals.
Recent theatrical and transmedia world premieres: THE BOOK OF MAGDALENE at Main Street Theater Houston; THEATRE: A LOVE STORY at Know Theatre Cincinnati; THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON at GALA Hispanic Theatre in D.C.; EVA LUNA at Repertorio Espanol/NY; USHUAIA BLUE at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival; LIFE JACKET at 4615 Theatre in Maryland, MEMORIES OF OVERDEVELOPMENT at Firehouse Theatre in Virginia.
She has received a Tanne Foundation Award, as well as the Ellen Stewart Award for Career Achievement in Professional Theatre from ATHE. They have twice won the National Latino Playwriting Award, for their plays SPARK and MAGNIFICENT WASTE. She is also a theatrical translator, chiefly known for English-language translations of the plays of Federico Garcia Lorca. Her plays have been seen across the US and abroad at diverse venues, among them Denver Center Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, 59E59, The Women's Project, GALA Hispanic Theatre, Milagro Theatre Group, Borderlands, Cervantes Theatre (London), Imago Theatre (Montreal), Teatro Mori (Chile), Artheater (Cologne), Ilkhom Theatre (Uzbekistan), and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has adapted for the stage novels by Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jose Leon Sanchez, and Rosario Ferre. They sustain a parallel career as a lyricist, editor, freelance arts journalist, educator and artivist. Their works are published by TCG, Smith & Kraus, Broadway Play Publishing, Intellect UK, Manchester University Press, Eyecorner Press, Seagull Books, StageReads, and more.
She has edited & authored several books on theatre and performance, among them TOWARD A FUTURE THEATRE (Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama), Mitchell & Trask's HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (4th Wall Series , Routledge).
She is Artistic Director of the Alcove New Play Development Program at the Lucille Lortel Theater in New York City, an alumna playwright of New Dramatists, Associate Editor of Contemporary Theatre Review for Routledge UK, Drama Editor of Asymptote literary journal, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press, and serves on the advisory board of Global Performance Studies journal. She holds an MFA from UCSD, and also trained for four consecutive years with Maria Irene Fornes at the legendary INTAR Hispanic Playwrights In Residence Laboratory. She is a former Harvard/Radcliffe Institute Fellow and TCG/PEW and TCG.NEA Fellow. Her archives are housed at the University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection in Florida, and partially at Ohio State University's Lawrence & Lee Theatre Collection.
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