Caridad Svich

Svich was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 30, 1963. Her Argentine father, Emilio, and her Cuban mother, Aracely, both came to the United States via Yugoslavia. She spent the majority of her childhood living in New Jersey and Miami, Florida. In her youth, Svich developed an interest in writing, and at the age of 14 she decided to pursue a career as a playwright when her attempts at fiction and poetry demonstrated a proclivity towards dialogue. She saw her first professional play in New York at the age 16, and from that point penned two full length plays a year during her high school and college years. ==University education and early plays==

Svich earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) in 1985. In 1985 Svich won a two year scholarship to the Professional Theatre Training Program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). In April 1986 her play Winter in July was staged as a part of UCSD's New Play Festival (NPF) at the Arthur Wagner Theatre with a cast led by actor Ivan G'Vera. At the 1987 NPF her play Proper Positions was performed. In her third year of the graduate playwriting program at UCSD her graduate thesis play, Brazo Gitano, was performed. It deals with both magic and Cuban-American music in a consequential fashion, and incorporates Santería beliefs. This play was also staged at Wagner College in 1988 and was the recipient of the 1989 Stanley Drama Award. While a student at UCSD, she held a playwright residency at La Jolla Playhouse. In 1988 she moved to New York City (NYC) where she attended play writing workshops taught by María Irene Fornés. In 2002-2003 she was a Bunting Institute Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. ==Playwright==

Svich has written over forty full-length plays and fifteen translations as well as other short works. At least 15 of her plays have been published in theatre anthologies. and Little Festival of the Unexpected (2002, Stage & Screen). Her plays have had professional stagings in the United States, Germany, Italy, Scotland, and England, and have also been staged at numerous universities. Her play Gleaning/Rebusca was given its premiere at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in 1991, and her play Any Place but Here was staged at INTAR Theatre in 1992 with a cast that included Jessica Hecht. The latter play was subsequently performed by the Latino Chicago Theater Company in 1993 with Reggie Hayes as Tommy; at Theater for the New City in 1995; Svich's play ''Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man's Blues was workshopped at the Royal Court Theater in London in 1993 and given its premiere at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in 1994. It won the Rosenthal New Play Prize. the Northern Light Theatre in Edmonton, Canada (1997), the Minneapolis Theatre Garage (1997), and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (2003). In July 1997 her play Scar'' was staged in Chicago by the Strawdog Theatre Company. In October 1999 Svich's play Prodigal Kiss was staged at the Key West Theatre Festival. This was followed by the collaborative work Stations of Desire, a piece co-written by 12 playwrights, which Svich coordinated, and which had concurrent performances in 2000 in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Providence, Minneapolis, and Denver. Some of the other participating playwrights included Neena Beber, Cusi Cram, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Cándido Tirado, and Julie Hébert. Her play Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart was workshopped at the Athens Epidaurus Festival in 2000, and subsequently staged professionally at 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta in 2004. Svich has done work as a singer-songwriter and for this reason many of her plays incorporate music. with a cast led by Tina Parker as Downcast Mary. It was subsequently staged at the Cleveland Public Theatre (2001) and the Hyde Park Theatre (2002). In February 2001 her play Nightwood was staged by the Buddies in Bad Times company in Toronto. Her play Begging The Eclipse was given its premiere at The Cutting Ball Theater in San Francisco as part of its 2002 New Play Festival. In April 2002 her play Perdita Gracia, based on William Shakespeare's ''The Winter's Tale, was premiered at Denison University (DU). The following month DU staged the premiere of a play she co-authored with Nick Philippou and Todd Cerveris, The Booth Variations'', which was based on the events surrounding the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The work featured music by Todd's brother, Tony Award winning actor and composer Michael Ceveris, and was subsequently performed Off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters in 2004. In the 2002-2003 season her plays The Tropic of X and The Monster in the Garden were premiered at INTAR. Her play Lucinda Caval (2007) was honored by the New Dramatists organization with the Whitfield Cook Award for New Writing. This work was later performed at the Oscar G. Brockett Theater in 2019. In October 2004 she was one of five women playwrights who contributed short works which were staged Off-Broadway collectively as Antigone Project by Women's Project Theater. Her contribution, Antigone Arkhe, featured an archivist's lecture on Antigone juxtaposed with a dancing sculpture and an "unsettling video and a 'lost' tape of Antigone's voice". In 2023 her play Arbor Falls was performed at Grinnell College in Iowa. ==Academic, translator, critic, and publisher==

Svich has published extensively as a theatre critic and academic. It was subsequently performed by the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts in 2004. Her translation of Federico García Lorca's Doña Rosita la soltera, entitled Doña Rosita or the Language of Flowers, was staged at Dartmouth College in 2004. She has received fellowships from the NEA/TCG, PEW Charitable Trust, and California Arts Council. She teaches creative writing and playwriting at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and Primary Stages’ Einhorn School of Performing Arts. She has been a visiting faculty member at Bennington College. She has also taught playwriting at Bard College, Barnard College, Denison University, Ohio State University, ScriptWorks, and University of California, San Diego. and has taught playwriting workshops at Paines Plough Theater in London and the US-Cuba Writer's Conference in Havana. Her work has responded to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, veterans and their families, survivors of trauma and Latin American topics. Svich was the co-organizer and curator of After Orlando, a collection of new 3– to 5– minute plays responding to the 2016 shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Over 40 theatrical institutions and universities in the United States and other countries participated. == Selected published works ==

Plays and dramatic sketches • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Books • • {{cite book| editor-last2 = Marrero| editor-first2 = María Teresa| editor-last1 = Svich| editor-first1 = Caridad| title = Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/Latino Theatre and Performance| publisher = Theatre Communications Group| location = New York • • • • • • (contains the plays Steal Back Light From the Virtual, Rift, Thrush, Luna Park, Wreckage, Fugitive Pieces and Instructions for Breathing) Journal articles • • • • • • • • • ==Awards==

• 2012 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement ==References==