Dávila, Jesús González 1940–2000

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Dávila, Jesús González 1940–2000

PERSONAL: Born 1940, in Mexico City, Mexico; died of cancer, May 8, 2000.

CAREER: Playwright and educator.

AWARDS, HONORS: Premio Nacional, 1985, for Desventurados; several playwriting awards, 1987, for De la calle; Premio Internacional Plural, 1991, for El mismo dia por la noche.

WRITINGS:

La fábrica de juguetes (play; title means "The Toy Factory"), first produced 1970.

Muchacha del alma (play; title means "A Girl with Soul"), first produced 1983.

Trilogia: tres obras en un acto, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Puebla, Mexico), 1985.

De la calle (play; title means "From the Street"), first produced in New York, NY, 1988.

Desventurados, Editorial Agata (Guadalajara, Mexico), 1990.

(With Angel Norzagaray) Una isla llamada California, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (Mexicali, Mexico), 1994.

Amsterdam bulevar, [Mexico City, Mexico], 1994.

Trilogia, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Mexico City, Mexico), 1997.

Pastoreles, Arbol (Mexico City, Mexico), 1999.

Foxardo 1824: y el bombardeo ritual de Vieques, Editorial LEA (San Juan, Puerto Rico), 2000, translated as Foxardo 1824 and the Ritual Bombing of Vieques, Markus Wiener Publishers (Princeton, NJ), 2001.

Also author of play El mismo día por la noche.

SIDELIGHTS: Jesús González Dávila was an award-winning Mexican playwright whose work was known for being "realistic, often brutal," according to an essayist in the Cambridge Guide to World Theatre. At the twelfth-annual Festival Latino held in New York City in 1988, Dávila's work was hailed as one of the "notable productions" on the playbill by Larry Rohter in the New York Times. Noting that all of the works showcased addressed issues of human rights, Rohter added that "these are works born of upheaval, concerned with poverty, exile, repression, assassination, racism and revolution, in which authors function as prosecutors, actors bear witness to certain moral truths, and the audience is called upon to become a sort of jury."

Of his play De la calle, Dávila once explained to Rohter: "Mine is not a theatre of spectacle or entertainment. I feel content if someone is scandalized or offended by what I show on the stage." In the play, Dávila presents an abandoned child's search for his father through some of the poorest, most brutal, and most dangerous parts of Mexico City. The playwright said he hoped to awaken the audience to the plight of children like this, "the kids who approach them hoping to sell gum or wash the windshield," to truly see the children's suffering and feel compassion for them. De la calle won almost every major theater award in Mexico City and New York in 1987, and was staged by the Theater Company of the National Institute of Fine Arts and directed by Julio Castillo. Castillo told Rohter, "I know this world because I myself come from it, having spent my childhood on the margins of Society."