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The 2005 PEN IS A MIGHTY SWORD first runner up is Caridad Svich for her play, The Tropic of X, set on an unnamed Caribbean island, is a colorful and often disturbing passage through a vivid dreamscape of world in decay as seen through the eyes of a pair of predatory young toughs. Played out against a vivid backdrop of video arcades, old and new drugs, internet cafes, ever-changing regimes, political repression, worthless currency, cheap sex, discos, peeling houses, fresh murals on ruined walls, spin, greed and the limitless dirty sea, the strange journey of Mori and Maura becomes a meditation on wretched excess in a world gone mad where all that remains is the sound of the human voice.
CARIDAD SVICH is a playwright-songwriter-translator and editor of Cuban-Spanish, Argentine and Croatian descent. She is the recipient of a Harvard University Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Bunting fellowship, a TCG/Pew National Theatre Artist Grant and has been twice short-listed for the PEN USA-West Award in Drama. Her work has been seen across the US and abroad at such diverse venues as Cincinnati Playhouse, the Royal Court, Salvage Vanguard, and the Mark Taper Forum Theatre.
Recent premieres: Iphigenia A Rave Fable at 7 Stages in Atlanta, Antigone Arkhe at The Women's Project/NY, her multimedia collaboration (with Todd Cerveris and Nick Philipppou) The Booth Variations at 59 East 59th Street Theatre/NY and 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and her version of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba at the Pearl Theatre/NY.
Other key plays include Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Any Place But Here, Fugitive Pieces, and Twelve Ophelias (a play with broken songs). She has also translated Federico Garcia Lorca's major and minor plays, and works by Calderon de la Barca, Julio Cortazar, and Ugljesa Satinac. She is resident playwright of New Dramatists. She is on the editorial committee of Contemporary Theatre Review (Routledge/UK), and contributing editor of TheatreForum. She has been selected for inclusion in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latino History.
She is editor of Trans-global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries (Manchester University Press), and Divine Fire: Eight Contemporary Plays Inspired by the Greeks (BackStage Books). She is co-editor of Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes (Smith & Kraus), Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/o Tehatre & Performance (TCG), and Theatre in Crisis? (MUP/Palgrave). Some of her translations are collected in Federico Garcia Lorca: Impossible Theater (Smith & Kraus). She holds an MFA from UCSD. Her catalogue can be found at www.alexanderstreetpress.com.
Her website is www.caridadsvich.com.
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