Personal information

Surname: González Cruz
First name: Luis Miguel
Born: 1965, Cáceres, Spain

Biography

Luis Miguel González Cruz (1965) is a multi-award winning playwright and film-maker. Born in Cáceres, he moved to Madrid to study cinematography and started producing his own short films in his early twenties. His career as a playwright really took off in 1993, with his play Thebas Motel (1993) winning a number of awards. González is a founding member of the Teatro del Astillero theatre company, along with contemporaries including Juan Mayorga and Raúl Hernández. El Astillero has published and produced many of González’s plays. In addition to his theatre work, González writes for the cinema and directs for film and television, most notably, for the Spanish cultural review programme, La Mandrágora.

Themes

González's theatre explores a wide variety of issues. A number of his plays feature theatre within theatre, or reference classical myths and mythical characters. His work is a reflection on the process of writing, of the struggle to capture reality using words and staging. As he states, ‘an author translates reality, defines it, makes sense of it, makes it comprehensible, from his own point of view’ (Miletich 1995).

• Miletich, Macarena. 1995. ‘Luis Miguel González Cruz: “El autor es el traductor de la realidad” ’, Actores, http://parnaseo.uv.es/Ars/Autores/Gonzalez/entrevistas/entrevista2.htm [accessed April 2011] (Online Publication) (in Spanish)

Style

González writes plays that are influenced by his background in film. In an interview in 1996, he claimed ‘I no longer make a distinction between cinema and theatre when it comes to writing. Some stories I imagine would work better in the cinema and others in the theatre, but in all honestly, I’m not exactly sure why’ (Monleón 1996).

• Monleón, Ángela. 1996. ‘Luis Miguel González Cruz: “Necesito leer y escribir para vivir de verdad” ’, Primer acto, 263, http://parnaseo.uv.es/Ars/Autores/Gonzalez/entrevistas/entrevista1.htm [accessed April 2011] (Online Publication) (in Spanish)

Plays in the database

• Flotando en el espacio (2010) / Floating in Space
• Thebas Motel (1993) / Thebas Motel
• La negra (1999) / The Negress
• Agonía (1995) / Agony
• Eterno retorno (1998) / Eternal Return
• La rabia (2002) / Rabies
• La carta (2003) / The Letter

Entry written by Gwynneth Dowling. Last updated on 23 May 2011.

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