Ramón Griffero

Ramón Griffero Sánchez (born 29 November 1954) is a Chilean playwright and theater director, one of the most prominent in his country. He is considered an emblematic figure of the national theater during the 1980s; his earliest productions are associated with cultural and political resistance to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Biography The son of industrial engineer José Griffero Marcel, ex-midshipman of the Lautaro, and of the Antofagastian Gabriela Sánchez Rojas, Ramón Griffero grew up with his sisters Gabriela Patricia and María Celeste. During his childhood, he traveled extensively with the family, since his mother's second husband was a Colombian diplomat, Nicasio Perdomo Godoy. Hence, he was educated at a dozen schools, among which are Saint Thomas the Apostle, Washington, D.C., the , the Liceo Las Condes, the Salesian School, the Patronage of San José, and the .

He entered the University of Chile in 1971 to study sociology, but two years later, following the coup d'état of General Augusto Pinochet against the socialist government of Salvador Allende, he went into exile in London. There, in Britain, he finished his career with a Bachelor of Arts degree in social sciences from the University of Essex.

In 1978, he studied at the National Film Institute of Brussels, where he made the short film L'Escargots, and the following year he entered the Theater Studies Center of the University of Louvain, from which he graduated with a Master's Degree. It was there where he made his debut as a playwright and theater director when, in 1980, he directed his first play Opera por un naufrage, with the University Theater.

Ramón Griffero returned to Chile in 1982, after nine years of residence in Europe. Shortly after his arrival, he began to present works in which he revealed his creative vision: a dramaturgy of strong sensations and scenic breaks, in which the traditional narrative structure is broken by the introduction of language based on poetry. From his first works, such as Recuerdos del hombre con su tortuga

Griffero has also ventured into narrative, with the publication of a series of short stories entitled Soy de la Plaza Italia. He has played a sustained role as a mentor of new theatrical generations, teaching at various universities and transmitting a critical attitude towards the Chilean artistic scene in the last decades of the democratic transition.

Beginning with his first local premieres, Ramón Griffero developed a dramatic approach that renewed the traditional models of the national theater. His works address the audience through themes and scenic elements that seek to awaken a reflection on the current situation of the country and contemporary society. Issues such as political conflicts and sexuality – married, associated with marginality, humiliation, and violence – are explored through spatial constructions in which the scenography plays an active role in the plot. These innovations are synthesized in the main contribution of Ramón Griffero to the theatrical language: the dramaturgy of space, a proposal whose development was assisted by the set designer Herbert Jonckers. and beginning in December of that year he directed the Camilo Henríquez Theater. Since 2017 he has held the position of Director of the , belonging to the University of Chile.

Politically, Griffero is on the left, as his work reflects. In his youth he participated in the Revolutionary Students' Front, promoted by the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and in Popular Unity. In 2016 he joined the Democratic Revolution, a party that proclaimed him a parliamentary candidate for the V Costa constituency in the November 2017 elections. Fellowship from the Andes Foundation for in situ research and writing of Sebastopol, on the abandoned saltpeter towns in northern Chile, 1996 1997 Santiago Municipal Literature Award for Río abajo 2000 APES Award for best editing for Cinema-Utoppia 2000 Altazor Award for Cinema-Utoppia 2004 APES Award for best director and best playwright for Tus deseos en fragmentos