The Life & Works of Carmen Resino

Carmen Resino is a contemporary Spanish playwright and writer who has been producing theatrical works since the late 1960s, and so far has around 40 titles under her belt. Although a large part of her work remains unpublished and un-staged, Carmen Resino has still achieved a great deal of fame and a collection of awards and prizes.

Carmen Resino - Life

Carmen Resino was born in the city of Madrid in 1941. She also went to study in Madrid, at the Complutense University where she read History. She then spent many years living in Gijón, in the northern Spanish region of Asturias, where she lived with her husband and Spanish playwright, the late Alberto Miralles. She also studied Theatrical aesthetics in the University of Ginebra and later achieved her doctorate in the art of the avant-garde artists.

She began writing for theatre at the end of the 1960s, with her play El Presidente which she wrote in 1968 and later performed on stage in 1970. The 1970s and 1980s were particularly productive years for Resino as she wrote and had performed a whole host of plays including Cero (1970), La sed (1974), Camino de destrucción (1975),Ultimar detalles (1984), and Personal e intransferible (1988), among many others. However there were also many other pieces of work by the playwright that remained unedited and unperformed. This is the case with her pieces entitled Ping-Pong, Diecinueve, and Libres en primavera.

In the year of 1986, Resino founded and became the president of the Asociación Dramaturgas Españolas. She also participated in many other bodies related to contemporary Spanish theatre including being part of the board of directors at the Asociación de Autores de Teatro as well as being a member of SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores) and the Asociación Colegial de Escritores.

In the more recent decades, Carmen Resino has continued to write theatrical works, but has also strayed into the novel genre. In 2009, her first novel La Bóveda Celeste was published. This book recreates the life of Livia Galileo, the forgotten daughter of the famous astronomer, Galileo Galilei. She has also written a collection of narrative too including Musas y gorgonas, Flora y fauna, and La mujer bermeja. Like many other contemporary Spanish authors, Carmen Resino has also found a place in painting, realizing that it is another, new way to express herself accurately.

She has also worked and continues to work in collaboration with various newspapers and magazines. Resino has also taken part in various theatre based congresses and symposiums as well as in the United States.

Carmen Resino - Works

The work of Carmen Resino often revolves around a set of constant themes which combine history with certain human topics such as isolation, frustration, the lack of solidarity in the face of pain, and brutality. Her theatre is mostly influenced in avant-garde theatre, in particular, the theatre of the absurd. She has written 40 pieces in this style, and particularly in historical drama.

Carmen Resino's development as a contemporary Spanish playwright is thanks to her constant and uninterrupted hard work, which is only occasionally broken by the odd production or publication, or to check out the large amount of varied and prestigious works that have been written about her work. However, Resino's work tends to be published rather than performed, so you might have trouble finding a performance of one of her plays if you ever visit Spain, but you should be able to find a printed copy of her work.

Her works have become very famous and have been translated into both French and English. Resino has also received a lot of positive critical attention, being selected as a finalist for some of the best literary awards in Spain, such as the Tirso de Molina Prize, the Lope de Vega Prize, and the National Prize for Dramatic Literature. She has also won several literary prizes including the Buero Vallejo Prize, the Best Spanish Author Prize at the Boesdaelhoeve in Brussels, and the Gijón Prize of Gijón. Furthermore, some of her plays have even been broadcast by the national Spanish television company, TVE, in their feature entitled La voz humana.

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