Personal information

Surname: Rozo
First name: Pedro
Middle names: Miguel
Born: 1974, Bogotá, Colombia

Biography

Pedro Miguel Rozo studied theatre arts at ASAB, the Bogotá Academy of Arts, specialising in directing. He is the founder and director of Corporación Luna, a collective with which he has staged the majority of his work as a playwright.

He teaches playwriting at several Colombian universities and is one of the organisers and managers of the Colombian National Playwriting Network. His theatrical work has appeared at festivals in several countries, including Spain, Uruguay, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada and France among others. His first novel El Testamento (The Testament) was a finalist in the Álvaro Cepeda Samudio Debut Novel competition in 2003.

Pedro attended the Royal Court International Residency in 2009 where he developed Nuestras vidas privadas (Our Private Life).’

Themes

Pedro Miguel Rozo explores polemical and taboo subject matter, to which he believes the medium of theatre particularly lends itself.  In Our Private Life, this is the subject of child abuse.  He is also concerned with the nature of theatricality itself as a theme in his writing and the effects of the ubiquitous telenovela (soap opera) on the Colombian consciousness.

Style

Our Private Life is not naturalistic.  The characters speak their thoughts exploiting the theatrical convention of the aside.  The play is also heavily ironic, combining serious and polemical subject matter (child abuse, homophobia) with an irreverent black humour.

Rozo is self-conscious about the influence of the Latin American telenovela (soap opera) in his playwriting.  Melodrama, family intrigue and denouement are treated satirically throughout Our Private Life, except in the epilogue, where there is a level of emotional three-dimensionality which is unexpected and surprising at the end of the play.

Plays in the database

• Nuestras vidas privadas (c.2008) / Our Private Life

Other works

• Rozo, Pedro Miguel. 1995. Solos para piano (Piano Solos) (in Spanish)

• Rozo, Pedro Miguel. 1996. Club suicida busca … (Suicide Club Seeks … ) (in Spanish)

• Rozo, Pedro Miguel. 1998. Viceversa (Vice-Versa) (in Spanish)

• Rozo, Pedro Miguel. 2001. Ascodeseo (Disgust-Desire) (in Spanish)

• Rozo, Pedro Miguel. 2001. Tálamo (Bridal Bed) (in Spanish)

• Rozo, Pedro Miguel. 2009. Purgatorio express (Purgatory Express) (in Spanish)

Entry written by Gwendolen Mackeith. Last updated on 15 June 2012.

Post a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment. Please log in or sign up for a free account.