Victoria Szpunberg
Holding a degree in Dramaturgy and Direction from the Institut del Teatre and a Master’s Degree in Theatre Studies at the UAB, Victoria Szpunberg is a playwright with a solid record of premieres, publications and artistic works of different types, as well as being a teacher and pedagogue at the Institut del Teatre, the Obrador de la Sala Beckett and other spaces for research and artistic training.
She became known in 1998 for her play Entre aquí y allá (Lo que dura un paseo) which was awarded the Maria Teresa León Prize, selected by the Royal Court of London (International Residency 2000) and premiered at the RESAD in Madrid in 2000 and at the Here Festival in New York in 2002. She has worked and premiered her own plays at theatres such as the TNC, the Teatre Lliure, the Tantarantana or the Sala Beckett itself in Catalonia, and also in theatres in Madrid and the rest of Spain. His texts have also been translated into several languages and have been seen in countries such as the United States, Colombia, Italy, Prague and France, among others.
Szpunberg is an author concerned with making theatre connected to the political and social issues of the contemporary world, with an open and transdisciplinary look (she has often worked as a playwright on dance projects) and without closing herself off in any single genre or register. With an original way of living and thinking about uprooting (cultural, geographical, etc.), her characters and the situations in which they find themselves often have to do with a kind of existential or ideological bewilderment, with a deep sense of displacement and with the undoing of stereotypes and clichés. This leads her to use genre strategies with finesse (unusual dystopias, pseudo-science fiction, absurd realism…) with a sense of humour and with an undeniable desire to relate to reality from a critical and poetic attitude at the same time.
In the wide range of her proposals that have been seen in Barcelona in recent years, we can remember works such as L’Aparador (2003), within the context of the TNC T-6 Programme, Esthetic Paradise (Sala Beckett/Festival Grec, 2004), La màquina de parlar (Sala Beckett, 2007 and 2022 and Teatre Maldà, 2017), El meu avi no va anar a Cuba (Festival Grec, 2008), La marca preferida de les germanes Clausman (Tantarantana, 2010 and Sala Beckett, 2019), Boys don’t cry (Teatre Lliure/Festival Grec, 2012), L’onzena plaga (as part of the ‘Tot pels diners’ cycle at the Teatre Lliure, 2015; nominated for the Butaca Awards of the same year) and Balena blava, monodrama for actress and orchestra (TNC, 2018). She has also participated in the VII SGAE Laboratory with the work Tu hija.
Szpunberg was an author in residence at the Sala Beckett during the 2018-19 season. Amor mundi is the resulting text and it was premiered in June 2019 as part of the Grec Festival.
She has premiered Mal de coraçon (TNC, 2023), El pes d’un cos (TNC/Centro Dramático Nacional, 2022), L’imperatiu categòric (Teatre Lliure de Gràcia, 2024, National Prize for Dramatic Literature 2025), La Tercera Fuga (Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 2025; Max Award for Best Playwriting 2026) and has written the libretto for the opera La gata perduda (Gran Teatre del Liceu, 2022).