The Mapmaker | Spain

Playwright: Juan Mayorga

Translator: Jerelyn Johnson

Director: Iraida Tapias

Partner: Water People Theater

Synopsis

In present-day Warsaw, Blanca hears the legend of the ghetto cartographer. According to that legend, an old cartographer was determined, while everything was dying around him, to draw the map of that world in danger; but since his legs no longer supported him, since he couldn't look for the data he needed, it was a girl who went out to look for them for him. Blanca will take the legend for truth and she will launch herself, obsessively, in search of the old map and, without knowing it, in search of herself. The cartographer is a work -a map- about that search and about that legend.

Juan Antonio Mayorga Ruano (Madrid-Spain, 1965). He is a Spanish playwright. His theater, deep, committed, and systematic, crossed national barriers to be translated and represented in the main theaters of the world. He has written about fifty plays. His theater has been represented throughout Europe and the American continent. It has been translated into thirty languages. Mr. Mayorga is also director of the Chair of Performing Arts and Master's Degree in Theatrical Creation at the Carlos III University of Madrid. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain and an honorary member of the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society. He worked at the National Drama Center and the National Classical Theater Company. He is a founding member of the Spanish Academy of Performing Arts. He currently directs the Teatro de La Abadía and the Corral de Comedias de Alcalá de Henares. He has won numerous awards, including:

National Theater Award (2007)

Valle-Inclán Award (2009)

Max Award for Best Author (2006, 2008, 2009)

Max Award for Best Adaptation (2008)

National Award for Dramatic Literature (2013)

Europe New Theatrical Realities Award (2016)

Princess Asturias Award for Letters (2022)

Jerelyn Johnson is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Fairfield University, in Fairfield CT. She received her PhD in Hispanic Studies from Brown University, MA in Spanish from Middlebury College; and her BA in Spanish and International Relations from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Both her teaching and scholarship center around Spanish literature, particularly theater, and issues of memory in contemporary Spanish culture. Her most recent presentations and publications have been on memory, history, and maps in the work of Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga. She is also co-founder of the theater company The Academy Players of Fairfield University, where she staged Mayorga’s plays Perpetual Peace and Way to Heaven, among others. Her book, Six Plays by Juan Mayorga, co-edited with David Johnston from Queen’s University Belfast, is the first ever English edition of six of Juan Mayorga’s most highly regarded plays, including The Mapmaker. It is scheduled for publication in early winter 2023 with Routledge Press/Taylor & Francis Group.

Iraida Tapias - During her 49-years-experience career in theater, she focused on producing and directing plays by Spanish American authors. She has written the plays “The Chosen Ones” (Los Elegidos), “The Worst of All” (La Peor de Todas) , about Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, “Afrodita”, “A cuenta de qué” “Una Historia de Zarzuela”, “Uno más y la cuenta” among others. She has directed over 27 theatrical pieces and six musicals, including “The House of Bernarda Alba” by F.G.Lorca, “Acto Cultural” and “El Día que me quieras” by José Ignacio Cabrujas, “MUSES” by Néstor Caballero, “Orchids in the moonlight” by Carlos Fuentes, “Orinoco” by Emilio Carballido, “The delicate Tears of Waning Moon” by Rebeca Alemán, ” Lorca - Living the Experience” texts and lyrics Federico Garcia Lorca, “It never was you” texts and lyrics by Kurt Weill, Theatrical Concerts “Lorca Forever” and “Walt Whitman & Federico García Lorca” by Iraida Tapias, “The Man of La Mancha”, the musical, written by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion. 

Ms. Tapias is the scriptwriter for the feature film “Macho y Hembra”, the documentary Soto about the kinetic artist, Jesús Soto, and the short films “Enough”, “Shut up”, both from the series ``Cries of Violence” that supports the fight against Gender-based violence. She has also written six soap operas for Radio Caracas Television. 

Since 2009, Mrs. Tapias has been Artistic Director of Water People Theater. 

Awards 

National Artist Award – Venezuela. Best Director. 

National Artist Award – Venezuela. Best Film Script Writer.

Playwright: Juan Mayorga