Roberto Cossa is a prominent Argentine playwright and theatre director.

Life and work

Roberto Cossa was born in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, and raised in the quiet residential borough of Villa del Parque

Villa del Parque

Villa del Parque is a barrio or district within the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Its name translates as Village of the Park and was derived from its earliest beginnings, when several haciendas were all that existed, alongside a growing agricultural park in this section of Buenos Aires...

. He first performed in theatre at the age of 17 and, in 1957, he and friends founded the San Isidro

San Isidro, Buenos Aires

San Isidro, Buenos Aires is a municipality in Greater Buenos Aires and one of the most affluent municipalities in Argentina. It is located in San Isidro Partido in the Buenos Aires Province....

 Independent Theatre. An admirer of Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

, he worked secretly as a local correspondent for Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

's state-owned press agency, Prensa Latina

Prensa Latina

Prensa Latina, legal name Agencia de Noticias Latinoamericana S.A. , is the official state news agency of Cuba, founded in March 1959 shortly after the Cuban Revolution.-Overview:...

, between 1960 and 1970. Cossa produced his first play, Nuestro fín de semana ("Our Weekend") in 1964. The Neo-realist

Neorealism (art)

In art, neorealism was established by the ex-Camden Town Group painters Charles Ginner and Harold Gilman at the beginning of World War I. They set out to explore the spirit of their age through the shapes and colours of daily life...

 work earned him numerous Argentine drama prizes and secured his reputation in the field. Contributing to the cultural sections of mainstream Argentine newsdailies such as Clarín

Clarín (newspaper)

Clarín is the largest newspaper in Argentina, published by the Grupo Clarín media group. It was founded by Roberto Noble on 28 August 1945. It is politically centrist but popularly understood to oppose the Kirchner government...

, La Opinión

La Opinión (Argentina)

La Opinión was an Argentine newspaper, founded by the journalist Jacobo Timerman in 1971. Its ideology was broadly centrist, inspired partly by the Paris daily Le Monde.-Development:...

 and La Nación between 1971 and 1976, Cossa avoided direct political references in his work. One exception to this was his 1970 play El avión negro ("The Black Plane"), a commentary on exiled populist leader Juan Perón

Juan Perón

Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...

's 1964 attempt to return to Argentina.

Following a period of a certain creative dearth, Cossa premiered La nona ("Grandma") in 1977. His most successful play, La nona represented a turn towards the grotesque in which the protagonist, a hundred-year-old Italian Argentine

Italian Argentine

An Italian Argentine is a person born in Argentina of Italian ancestry. It is estimated up to 25 million Argentines have some degree of Italian descent...

 grandmother, burdens her working-class family with her senile dementia and ravenous appetite. La nona, still performed in Buenos Aires and elsewhere, remains among the most recognizable plays in Argentine theatre and was adapted into a film version in 1979.

The climate of repression that prevailed in Argentina during its last dictatorship

National Reorganization Process

The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...

 eased somewhat in 1980 as General Jorge Videla prepared to transfer power to General Roberto Viola, an advocate for increased, if limited, artistic freedom. Playwright Osvaldo Dragún

Osvaldo Dragún

Osvaldo Dragún was a prominent Argentine playwright and theatre director.-Life and work:Osvaldo Dragún was born in Colonia Berro, a Jewish agricultural settlement in Entre Ríos Province, Argentina. After his father's linseed farm suffered from recurrent locust problems, the family left the...

 seized the opportunity to organize an Teatro Abierto

Argentine Open Theatre

The Argentine Open Theatre was an independent theatre company in Buenos Aires, Argentina.-Origins:The theatre in Argentina had developed alongside the nation's emergence as a modern economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries...

("Open Theatre") movement, calling on Cossa and fellow playwrights Luis Brandoni

Luis Brandoni

Luis Brandoni is an Argentine film and television actor. Politically active in the centrist Radical Civic Union , he was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1993, where he served until, 2001...

, Jorge Rivera López and Pepe Soriano

Pepe Soriano

Pepe Soriano is a prominent Argentine actor and playwright.-Life and work:Soriano was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina...

, as well as receiving support from prominent intellectuals such as Nobel laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel is an Argentine sculptor, architect and pacifist. He was the recipient of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize.-Biography:Pérez Esquivel was born in Buenos Aires to a Spanish fisherman who emigrated to Argentina...

 and writer Ernesto Sábato

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

. Refurbishing a former Buenos Aires sparkplug factory into the Picadero Theatre, they premiered their first festival on July 28, 1981, featuring Cossa's Gris de ausencia ("Pale of Absence") among the evening's repertoire. During an August 6 performance, however, three fire bombs were set off in the theatre, forcing the Open Theatre to relocate (The Picadero was reopened in 2001).

Cossa's successful adaptation of La nona into film encouraged him to provide screenplays for his play El arreglo

El Arreglo

The Deal is a 1983 Argentine thriller film directed by Fernando Ayala and written by Roberto Cossa and Carlos Somigliana. The film premiered on 19 May 1983 in Buenos Aires.-Plot:...

("The Deal") and No habrá más penas ni olvido ("Dirty Little War") in 1983. Both became well-known Argentine films memorable for their bold indictments of the problems of corruption and revenge in Argentine society. His theatre works became more prolific following democratic elections

Argentine general election, 1983

The Argentine general election of 1983 was held on 30 October and marked the return of Democracy after the 1976's dictatorship self-known as National Reorganization Process...

 in 1983 and included Ya nadie recuerda a Frederic Chopin ("No One Remembers F.C."), a study in frustrating exile, De pies y manos ("On Hands and Feet"), a realist look into the effect of the dictatorship on one family, and Los compadritos ("The Poseurs"), a controversial review of the events surrounding the 1939 sinking of the Graf Spee.

Cossa, in 1987, premiered what would become his most successful work since La nona, Yepeto ("Gepetto"). The character study sets an aging drama professor in a love triangle with two students, one a young lady leading a charmed life with whom he becomes infatuated and the other an impetuous young man whom the teacher feels he must rescue from himself, despite his jealousy for the unabashed youth. The tension made Yepeto a hit in Argentine theatres and, starring La nona great Ulises Dumont

Ulises Dumont

Ulises Dumont was a prolific Argentine film actor, credited with over 80 appearances in film and countless others in theatre and television from 1964 until his death in 2008.-Life and work:...

, it ran for about 5000 performances in the 1990s before its 1999 film release.

Conferred the National Theatre Prize Argentina and the Public and Critics Prize of Spain

Culture of Spain

The culture of Spain is based on a variety of influences.The Visigothic Kingdom left a sense of a united Christian Hispania that was going to be welded in the Reconquista. Muslim influences were strong during the period of 711 AD to the 15th century, especially linguistically...

, Cossa was appointed President of the General Society of Argentine Authors in 2007.