The papers of Jorge Díaz, one of the most distinguished members of Chile’s literary Generación del 50 and an extraordinarily prolific playwright, are now available for research in Firestone Library’s Special Collections.
Jorge Díaz wrote more than one hundred plays for adult audiences and thirty-seven for children. Some of his best known plays include El cepillo de dientes (1960), Topografía para un desnudo (1965), Toda esta larga noche (1976), Las cicatrices de la memoria (1984), Nadie es profeta en su espejo (1990), Canción de cuna para un anarquista (2003), and El Quijote no existe (2005). In addition to theater, he wrote short stories, poems, radio and TV scripts. He published more than 50 books in Chile, Spain and other countries.
The Jorge Díaz Papers consist of manuscripts (primarily theatrical works, but also narrative and poetry), radio and television scripts, translations, correspondence, photographs, personal documents, digital files, and printed material related to his work, including newspaper clippings, programs, posters, awards, magazines, and books. A finding aid listing the content of the archive in detail is available online.
Jorge Díaz was born in Rosario, Argentina, on February 20, 1930, and moved with his family to Chile when he was only four years old. His career in theater began towards the end of the 1950s when he joined the Ictus group in Santiago, working first as a set designer and then as a playwright. In 1965, he moved to Madrid, Spain, and lived there for nearly thirty years. He returned to Chile in 1994 where he continued to write and paint until his death on March 13, 2007. Díaz received numerous awards including the Premio Nacional de Artes Audiovisuales y de la Representación in Chile and the Premio Tirso de Molina in Spain.
To learn more about the author’s life and work, visit the Jorge Díaz Dramaturgo website:
The papers of Jorge Díaz join Princeton’s archival holdings of other prominent Chilean writers such as José Donoso, Diamela Eltit, Jorge Edwards, Enrique Lihn, and Mauricio Wacquez.