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Biography
Juan Tovar was a Mexican playwright, narrator, translator and screenwriter. His "antihistorical" theater breathed new life into the genre.
He studied at the Colegio Alexander von Humboldt , finishing high school in 1958, and later studied Chemical Engineering for a few semesters at the Autonomous University of Puebla , where he participated as an actor and translator in the University Theater of Ignacio Ibarra Mazari . The student movement of 1961 gave him the opportunity to start out as a journalist, a job that (like that of a translator) he would take up again in Mexico City , where he moved in 1962, upon discovering his vocation for writing, abandoning engineering to study Spanish Literature in UNAM _. He did not graduate here either, for which he becomes a writer who practices without a title —although, as his teacher Emilio Carballido wrote on the back cover of his first book, “a born writer, who naturally exercises an evident vocation ”.
He stood out as a storyteller in the 1960s, obtaining an honorable mention in the 1963 Casa de las Américas Literary Contest with his first book. He received a scholarship in 1964-65 from the Centro Mexicano de Escritores , the following year he received the prize for short stories La Nombre and the Man of the Veracruzana University for Los mysteries of the kingdom (1966), and in 1970 the novel prize of the First Youth Cultural Contest ( SEP ) for The girl on the balcony or the presence of the retired colonel .
Around the year 1967, he began his teaching work at the School of Theater Art of the National Institute of Fine Arts , where he taught the subjects of Dramatic Theory and Text Analysis, and his work at El Heraldo de México as editor-in-chief of the Show Supplement. Here he develops, until 1974, a consistent work of film, theater, and even musical criticism. Between 1975 and 1976 he was chief editor of the Diorama de la Cultura supplement , during the last year that Excelsior was directed by Julio Scherer .
He also works as a screenwriter, writing with Paul Leduc " Reed, México insurgente " (Prix Georges Sadoul, 1972) and, with Diego López and Juan Mora , "Crónica de familia" (Ariel for best screenplay of 1987), among other films.
As of his second novel, the traditional realism of his first stories is gradually subverted by a kind of expressionist game of planes and times that culminate in the unclassifiable Creature of a day , a "lyrical story in a dramatic key" where the poet takes out a reckoning with the narrative form, henceforth concentrating on writing drama. The novel was published for the first time in 1984 and grew through four editions, until reaching the final version in 2009. An English version, made by Leland Chambers with the collaboration of Ricardo Vinós and the author, is made with the support of the Mexico/United States Trust for Culture, and is the recipient of the 2001 Kayden Award .
At the same time, he teaches courses and workshops at the University Theater Center , the Cinematographic Training Center , the International Film and TV School of San Antonio de los Baños , Cuba , at the Contemporary Theater Forum and the Morelense Center for the Arts . From this dual experience is born his book on the theory and practice of drama: Doble vista (2006). [ 5 ] In 2018, Tovar receives the Fine Arts Medal for Literature "in recognition of his mastery as a playwright, narrator and translator, for which, thanks to his courageous historical and social criticism, Mexican literature has been enriched ".
Productions
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Artist Information
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