Matt Barbot

Matt Barbot is a Nuyorican playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. Barbot worked as an actor before becoming a playwright at the age of 26 with his first play, Infallibility. His best-known play was El Coquí Espectácular and the Bottle of Doom.His play A List of Some Shit I've Killed was published in the anthology Red Bull Shorts Volume III.

Early life Barbot was born and raised in a Puerto Rican family in Brooklyn, New York where he attended Regis High School, a Jesuit High School. In his Church History course he found a "window into Catholicism," later inspiring his work Infallibility. Barbot received degrees in Creative Writing and Theater at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA and an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. Although writing and producing plays is his main focus, as a fan of comics, Barbot worked as an editor and writer with comic book creator Edgardo Miranda Rodriguez for Somos Arte's La Borinqueñ and Darryl Makes Comics' DMC. The play is set in the jail and performed for the prison guards. Infallibility was produced in 2014 as a part of the annual New York International Fringe Festival, and was one of Indie Theater Now's Best of FringeNYC 2014. The play uses magic realism to tell the story of siblings living in New York. With their mother deceased and their father catatonic, Jose tells magical stories of his younger sister as a fairy princess. They discover Fefu, a fairy scout whose goal is to bring Clara to the magical realm.

Barbot's best-known play, El Coquí Espectácular and the Bottle of Doom premiered at the Two River Theater on January 8, 2018. In the play, Alex Nuñez, an out of work comic book creator, creates a Nuyorican superhero named El Coquí Espectácular. Putting on a vigilante mask, Alex Nuñez takes on the character's identity at night to protect his Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park from gentrification and corporations.

In 2018, Barbot's play A List of Some Shit I've Killed was published in the anthology Red Bull Shorts Volume III. The play is about the story of Heracles' Bow, told backwards and through the lens of toxic masculinity, examines how "men ruin everything".

Awards +List of Awards and RecognitionEl Coquí Espectácular and the Bottle of DoomKennedy Center's Darrel Ayers Award for Outstanding Student-Written Play for Young Audiences

Kennedy Center's Latinidad Award for Outstanding Play Written by a Student of Latino/Hispanic Heritage

Finalist in the 2014 Repertorio Español Nuestras Voces competitionInfallibilityNamed one of Indie Theater Now's Best of FringeNYC 2013 Princess Clara of LoisaidaFinalist for the Latinx Theatre Commons' 2018 Carnaval of New Latinx Work

Finalist for Columbia@Roundabout New Play SeriesSaints Go MarchingSemifinalist for the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference