SVICH, Caridad 1963-

PERSONAL:

Born July 30, 1963, in Philadelphia, PA; daughter of Emilio Dario and Aracely Besteiro. Education: University of North Carolina, B.F.A. (theatre); University of California, San Diego, M.F.A. (theatre). Religion: Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Yoga, tennis, cycling, reading, singing.

ADDRESSES:

Home—4601 Tweedy Blvd., Ste. H, SoGate, CA 90280; fax 520-569-9191. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Playwright, editor, songwriter, teacher, and performer.

MEMBER:

New Dramatists, Dramatists Guild, Playwrights' Center.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Goucher College Open Circle Theatre Playwriting Award, 1983; Cincinnati Playhouse Rosenthal New Play Prize, 1993-94; first runner-up, Arizona Theatre Company National Hispanic Playwrights Award; first place, West Coast Ten-Minute Play Festival, 1999; first place, Perishable Theatre Annual Women's Theatre Festival, 2000; grants and additional awards from academic and private theatre and playwright organizations.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

Waterfall, produced at University of North Carolina, 1983.

Winter in July (one-act text), produced at University of California—San Diego, 1986.

Proper Positions (one-act text), produced at University of California—San Diego, 1987.

Voice and Vision Play with Your Food, produced at University of California—San Diego, 1988, produced in New York, 1996.

Gleaning/Rebusca, produced in New York, 1989.

But There Are Fires (one-act text), produced in New York, 1991.

Shelter, produced in New York, 1991.

Any Place but Here (produced in California, 1992), published in TCG Plays-in-process, Volume 13, number 12, 1993.

Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues (produced in Los Angeles, 1993), published in Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/o Theatre and Performance, TCG Books, 2000.

Scar, produced in Cincinnati, then New York, NY, 1994.

Away down Dreaming, produced in San Francisco, 1995.

Pensacola, produced in California, 1997.

Prodigal Kiss, produced in California, 1997.

Twelve Short Prayers for Life When Dying, produced in California, then New York, NY, 1998.

Carnival (one-act text), produced in Los Angeles, 1998.

The Archaeology of Dreams, produced in California, 1999.

Torch, produced at Vanguard Theatre, California, 1999.

Finding Life (one act text; produced in Providence, RI), published in Eighth Annual Women's Playwriting Festival Anthology of One-Act Plays, Perishable Theatre, 2000.

Nightwood (one-act text), produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2000.

Steal Back Light from the Virtual, New Dramatists Fall Readings, 2000.

Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart, produced in California, 2000.

Fugitive Pieces, produced in Chicago, IL, 2000.

(With others) Stations of Desire: Saints, Sinners, and In-Between (online text), produced in Minneapolis, MN, 2000.

Also author of Brazo Gitano, published in Ollantay Theatre Magazine, Volume VI, number 11.

OTHER

(Editor with Maria M. Delgado) Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes, Smith & Kraus (Lyme, NH), 1999.

(With Maria Teresa Marrero) Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/Latino Theatre and Performance, Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 2000.

(Translator) Federico García Lorca, Impossible Theatre: Five Plays and Thirteen Poems, Smith & Kraus (Hanover, NH), 2000.

(Editor) Trans-global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2003.

Author of articles and reviews in periodicals, including Monologues for Women by Women, Contemporary Theatre Review, Dramatist, Theatre Today, and American Theatre.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Transmission 05:00/To the Blue Peninsula, a play; In the Upper Room, a play; Random Acts of Culture, an online text collaboration with eleven playwrights.

SIDELIGHTS:

Caridad Svich told CA: "Flux is at the core of my writing aesthetic. My work, although an outgrowth of a singular vision, reflects my interest in a variety of structural forms, styles, and tones.

"Born in the United States of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian descent, I am a first-generation hybrid, a daughter of a hybrid sensibility which is neither fully Latina nor fully American, but rather an sensibility in flux: bilingual, multicultural, female. Although primarily a playwright, I am also an editor, songwriter, teacher, and performer.

"My plays are naturally built on the concept of collage, mixing poetry, songs, ritual, traditional Western dramatic scenes, movement, and images. They are character-based and rooted in a sense of place, be it emotional or geographic terrain, as well as rooted in the notion of giving voice to dispossessed voices.

"My play Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues in particular stems from a desire to re-imagine the United States from within: to take apart familiar structures and reconfigure them in a way that will forge a new theatrical identity, one that is reflective of a multifaceted culture yet rooted in ancient, even primeval impulses and forms. The nature of my work is to always chart anew, building on what has gone before, seeking transcendence and spiritual transformation in a world not yet gone wrong.

"Plays like Any Place but Here, Fugitive Pieces, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart, and Steal Back Light from the Virtual explore the nature of violence, its randomness, and the inescapable hold of myth on contemporary life.

"The biggest influence on my work, besides my cultural lineage and the influence of having grown up bilingual—speaking Spanish in the home and English 'outside'—would have to be the rather nomadic existence I have lived. Between the ages of five and twenty-seven I lived in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida, Utah, New York, and California, along with twice as many cross-U.S. trips in between.

"The process of seeing the country, being constantly uprooted and having to adapt to new circumstances, has left a marked imprint in the formation of my work and worldview. You can never really escape where you're from, but if you're from nowhere and everywhere, the source of the work is significantly changed. It has meant that I write both consciously and not about location, dislocation, about longing for home, and running away, about feeling like an exile and feeling like a native. The decidedly American obsession with wanderlust is both a topic of exploration and continual de-mythologization.

"I have a strong connection to various literary figures—Virginia Woolf, Federico García Lorca, Annie Dillard, Borges, Shakespeare—but also to the work of other artists in dance, music, and photography, including Velazquez, Ana Mendieta, Helen Levitt, Twyla Tharp, Charles Ives, and Patti Smith, to name a few. From Woolf's writings I especially learned about form, the role memory plays, and the necessity for experimentation and the vitality of a woman's voice. From one of my teachers, Maria Irene Fornes, with whom I studied for four years, I learned to not be afraid to speak the truth in my work.

"My commitment to theatre even in this technological age is strong and vital. Although I welcome the use of sophisticated technology in theatre, my primary concern is a poet's concern: voice and space, voice in space and time. My areas of experimentation are never far removed from this basic concern. The language of theatre with its ability to encompass literary, painterly and musical traditions is the language with which I currently feel most comfortable to address the public and private realms of experience which constitute the focus of my work."