The playwright Oriol Puig Grau (Barcelona, 1992) has won the 2023 Calderón de la Barca Theater Award from the Ministry of Culture with Massa Brillant, a play in Catalan set in the popular 'Sarao drag' at the Apolo nightclub in Barcelona and which reflects about queer heritage and the protagonist's generation. The award, intended to recognize and promote the work of authors who have not publicly released more than one theatrical production, is endowed with 10,000 euros and the publication of the winning work by the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music.
The jury has awarded the prize for “its peculiar form between introspective poetic narration and suggestive drama” to a text that “relates the protagonist's discomfort with himself, in contrast with the night party environment that surrounds him.” Puig Grau, surprised by winning an award for which he was submitted, says, to "bring the text to life", emphasizes that Massa Brilliant follows the path of a young man, Guillem, "who goes for the first time to the Sarao drag at the Sala Apolo in Barcelona".
"The work accompanies Guillem during this night that ends up becoming a kind of descent into hell and that works as a mirror of a heritage to which the Sarao is very connected and perhaps he is not so connected. The queer heritage. It's a look back and a look inward at where he is and where he's going, where he belongs and all these identity issues. A very personal journey for this boy. Throughout the night the party brings him into contact with a series of environments and people with whom he had not been in contact until now and explores all that. A discovery," highlights the author of the celebrated Karaoke Elusia, which was seen at the Sala Beckett and the National Dramatic Center and which addressed topics such as harassment school, mental health and youth suicide.
The jury highlighted from the text how "the protagonist's feeling of not finding his place is expressed in the text with great literary maturity, along with a feeling of discomfort with clear generational connotations."
Oriol Puig Grau graduated with a degree in scriptwriting and playwriting from Escac and since then he has combined his career as a creator with that of an actor. Member of the third edition of the Els Malnascuts project at the Sala Beckett in Barcelona, he is the author of one of the sound fictions of the Dramawalker project of the National Dramatic Center. In the audiovisual field, he has directed and written the feature film El Sitio de Otto, and as an actor he has worked in television series such as Velvet (Antena 3), La Verdad (Telecinco), Drama (Playz) or Com si fos ahir (TV3). and films like Júlia Ist.
The award jury has been chaired by Inaem director general Joan Francesc Marco and theater deputy director general Ana Fernandez Valbuena, and has counted as vocals with Beckett Room director Toni Casares; the writer and National Dramatic Literature Award winner Yolanda Garcia Serrano; actresses, playwrights and theater directors Eva Redondo Llorente and Ana Cristina López Segovia and the winner of the previous edition of the award, Gabriel Fuentes.
Among those awarded in previous editions are Juan Mayorga, Luisa Cunillé, Paco Bezerra, Yolanda Pallín, Borja Ortiz de Gondra, Pablo Remón and Eva Mir.
