Selected Plays by Cuban Playwright Abel Gonz?lez Melo: Chamaco (Kiddo); Nevada; Weathered; Outside the Game; Tell Me the Whole Thing Again; Abyss - Hardcover

by Abel Gonz?lez Melo (Author), William Gregory (Translator)

"One of Cuba's most important contemporary playwrights, Abel Gonz?lez Melo is known for a hybrid poetics in which he employs contemporary formal features, such as non-linear storytelling and flashbacks, interwoven with elements from the classical tradition in order to stage the ignoble realities of postmodern life. " (Lillian Manzor, University of Miami)

Born in Havana in 1980, Abel Gonz?lez Melo is a rare example of a contemporary Cuban playwright whose work is performed and celebrated not only in Cuba, but also in the US, the Americas more widely, Europe, and beyond.
Investigating a raft of national and universal themes, such as queer sexuality, the dilemma of leaving or remaining, political power and censorship, family dynamics, the ambition and responsibility of the artist, and so-called 'cancel culture', Gonz?lez Melo's work is international and universal in scope. The result of a 20-year collaboration with translator William Gregory, this collection of six plays surveys Gonz?lez Melo's eclectic two-decade career: from his beginning with earlier works exploring the pulsing underworld of early-2000s Havana in Chamaco and Nevada, through to his most recent takes on theatre and its intersection with contemporary issues in Tell Me the Whole Thing Again and Abyss.

Complete with an edited introduction by Ernesto Fundora and a translator's note from Gregory, Selected Plays by Cuban Playwright Abel Gonz?lez Melo explores not only Gonz?lez Melo's oeuvre but also his distinctive stylistic and aesthetic variety, gained from living in both Spain and Cuba.

Author Biography

Havana-born Abel Gonz?lez Melo's plays have been commissioned, produced, published and translated extensively in Cuba, the UK, US, Spain, and beyond. The recipient of multiple awards, he is currently Artistic Associate at Madrid's prestigious Teatro de La Abad?a, and Director of the Universidad Carlos III Theatre Company.

Producers of William Gregory's translations have included the Royal Court and Gate theatres (UK); Play Company and the Washington Ensemble (US); Rumble Theatre (Canada), and Th??tre Excentrique (Australia). Publications with Bloomsbury include The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Plays and The Uncapturable by Rub?n Szuchmacher.