ARGENTINA: recordando a una pionera del teatro de mujeres en América Latina

Chilean playwright Isidora Aguirre dies aged 92

Escena de la La pérgola de Las flores (2010)

The Chilean playwright Isidora Aguirre, author or the classical musical play “La Pérgola de las Flores” (The Flower Stand) and many other theatre works, died in a hospital in Santiago late last night at 92 years of age, her family members informed.
The author, who died of old age, won many awards during her career for her contribution to theatre including Cuban prize “Casa de las Américas” in 1987 for “El Retablo de Yumbel”. In Chile she won the Critics Award for “La Pérgola de las Flores” (the Flower Stand) which she wrote in 1960, plus being twice awarded by City Award of Santiago for “Los Papeleros” (1964) and for “Los que van quedando en el camino” (1969).
However she didn’t receive the award which she always desired, such as the National Theatre Prize. She had always exclaimed how she had wanted to win the award, and was actually nominated many times.
“I’d love to win the award, but it’s not something that worries me if I don’t,” she mentioned, in an interview with Chilean newspaper El Mercurio in August of last year.
Born in Santiago on the 22 January 1919, she studied film studies in France and theatre in Chile, then starting her portfolio of drama works with the support of the university theatre world. She also became a professor at the University Theatre in Chile.
Her first tragedy, “Población Esperanza” (Population of Hope), written in collaboration with the novelist Manuel Rojas, was released in 1959 and a year later The Flower Stand shot to fame in Latin America, and was adapted for Argentine Cinema.
Following her burial, her daughters have arranged for her funeral and memorial to take place in a theatre hall, as she would have wanted. Aguirre remains one of the pioneers of female theatre works and authors for Latin America, and sustains her achievements and mark as one Chile’s top female writers in history.

The Buenos Aires Herald