Biography

Alonso Alegría is the most prestigious and internationally known Peruvian playwright. He is the son of world-famous Peruvian ‘indigenista’ novelist Ciro Alegría and of concert pianist and librarian Rosalía Amézquita.

Alegria went to school in Lima at Markham College (1945-57) and at the National Engineering University Architecture School where he participated in theatre activities while also taking workshops at the San Marcos University Theatre (1958-62).  He dropped out of Architecture to embrace theatre and attended Yale University on a Fulbright travel grant and a Yale full scholarship. At Yale he earned B.A. (1964) and M.F.A. (1966) degrees, later conducting special studies in Stage Directing with Joseph Papp (1966-67) while serving as his student assistant.  Alegría has been a student and mentee of Reynaldo D'Amore, Luis Álvarez, Nikos Psacharopoulos, John Gassner and Joseph Papp.

At age 31 Alegría became founder and Producer-Director of the official governmental Peruvian National Popular Theatre (1971-78).  Thereafter he taught theatre and dramatic literatures in three American universities (from 1969-71 at Texas-Tech University and from 1979-87 at Waynesburg University and Kenyon College).  He was Associate Professor of Playwriting at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú from 1998 until 2016.  In 2013 he founded and became Director of Vivero de Dramaturgia (The Playwriting Greenhouse), a privately run system of successive Playwriting workshops which, since 2011, has been mentoring the development of most of the best award-winning Peruvian plays and playwrights while also producing some of their plays.

Alegría’s own playwriting is elegant and expressive in its own style of dialogue, with a light ironic humor in the background and an attachment to straightforward dramatic storytelling of accessible and meaningful stories, attractive to both the general public and theatre specialists. His play Crossing Niagara became an international success after having won the Cuban ‘Casa de las Américas’ prize in 1969.  This play has been produced in more than 50 countries around the world. There have been twenty-three productions in Germany alone, four in the UK (including the National Theatre in 1975, directed by the late John Russell Brown) and more productions in such diverse countries as Japan, Israel, Morocco, Australia, all of Eastern Europe and every Spanish-speaking country in the World.

Alegría frequently makes use of the presentational theatrical convention (no fourth wall), particularly in The White Suit, Daniela Frank and, most of all, To nicely die.  His latest success has been Bolognesi in Arica, a historical multi-technique play that opened in 2013 and is still playing in occasional city-wide and national tours throughout Peru.  

Aside from his dramatic work, Alegría has written "OAX, crónica de la radio en el Perú 1925-1990" a history of radio in Peru on assignment from RPP broadcasting company; he was the director of the creative group which, in 1990, invented Nubeluz, the well-known international children’s TV program. In 2000 he was the Casting Director for Latin America and Cultural Advisor for Proof of Life, a Warner Brothers Film scripted by Tony Gilroy and directed by Taylor Hackford.  In July 2007 he produced and directed "Mi novela favorita" (“My Favorite Novel”), a series of 78, one-hour sound adaptations of as many classical and contemporary novels and narratives, all introduced and conducted by Nobel-prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa.

Alegría’s plays: titles with place and date of first production:

• Crossing Niagara, (Casa de las Américas Prize, 1969 in Lima).

• The White Suit. (1981 in Potsdam, East Germany)

• Daniela Frank. (1984 at Williamstown Theatre Festival, USA; 1993 in Lima)

• Meeting with Faust. (1999 in Lima)

• Libertad! (an opera libretto, 2005 in Montpellier, France)

• To Nicely Die. (2009 in Lima)

• Bolognesi in Arica (2013 in Lima)