I Interview Playwrights Part 538: Saúl Enríquez

Translated by Andrea Thome and Lily Padilla

Saúl Enríquez

Hometown: I’m from Cardel, Veracruz, a beautiful town in the Gulf of Mexico, but I grew up in a magnificent valley in Orizaba, Veracruz.

Current City: Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico





Q:  What are you working on now?


A:  I’m creating a play about the reckless side of teenagers. It is part of a three play series on adolescence that I’m working on.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.




A:  I grew up in a place where people are used to creating stories; talking about legends that are constantly breaking down and being reconstructed. I remember one time when people swore they had found a werewolf on a mountain and that he had been captured by soldiers. I was a child, but to me the story seemed implausible. I was more fascinated by the fact that people believed this story than by the story itself.


Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?




A:  The theater is a rare animal without rules…I like this. 



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?




A:  I don’t know about heroes, but playwrights that I have always admired are Shakespeare, Racine, Moliere, Beckett, Chekhov, Strindberg, Mamet, Albee, Miller, Kane. And the Mexicans: Liera, Gonzales Dávila y Olguìn, Leñero, Berman. Directors and actors are another list.


Q:  What kind of theater excites you?




A:  All theater that creates a new universe and stays true to its own invented logic.


Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?


A:  I am beginning. But I like to focus on substance over form.



Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  My theater company’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nuncamerlot-Teatro/336899535544?fref=ts







Reading of Schnauzer Duck at the Lark in New York this Sunday at 3 translated by Mariana Carreño King and directed by May Adrales.