Bøker av Edwin Sanchez

A Puerto Rican hit woman, her mentally challenged son, and a janitor who dreams of nothing more than being a father meet the neighbors from hell. Crass, rude and desperate these neighbors are like everybody else, looking for a way to end their loneliness. These characters find out the hard way that family comes first.LA BELLA FAMILIA is a winner of the New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship and the National Latino Playwriting Award.

Angel, a gay gold digger sets his sights on a newly out and proud billionaire. Dragging his best friend along for the ride and leaving collateral damage in his wake, Angel's plans hit a wall when the billionaire's best friend, Chi Chi, steps in and takes over. Vengeful ex-wives, imaginary lover, closeted twin brothers: Angel will crawl over all of them for the prized wedding ring.

Trapped in horrendous and cramped living conditions with his father and grandfather, Rosario Cortez battles to break his family's cycle of poverty and remove his son from the violence and squalor of the urban ghetto."Few playwrights are persuasive enough to make an audience root for a young man who batters his girlfriend and considers kidnapping and murder to get what he wants. But from the moment we meet Rosario Cortez, singing to his infant son and promising him a better future with a passion that burns white-hot, we like him. After we see his living conditions - sharing a cramped room with his father and grandfather, who spend their days watching porno films - we know that extreme measures are necessary. That doesn't mean that we approve of Rosario's means or the ways in which he expresses his anger. But we understand his motives, share his dreams and admire his tenacity. It is not surprising that the writer who's created Rosario and his world of longings is Edwin Sánchez, who also wrote TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS. That haunting play centered on a love triangle involving a street hustler, an abused teenager and a yuppie lawyer, all yearning for something more in their lives. Sánchez knows how to capture the world of dreamers ... play ... moves gracefully ... carried along by beautiful writing ..." -Aileen Jacobson, Newsday"... a touching drama that's worthy of attention ..." -David Kaufman, Daily News"Edwin Sanchez's tough, twisty, surprising new plays shows his usual flair for dealing with predictable subjects unpredictably ... [and with] sparky verbal flights ..." -Michael Feingold, Village Voice

"The mercurial qualities of love, dreams, and beauty provide the gently pulsating thrust of Edwin Sánchez's new play ICARUS… New plays are often either hard and edgy or soft and sappy. ICARUS is the rare creation that is allowed to be both. Unabashedly sweet, often lyrical and even incisive, Sánchez's play takes a group of oddball characters-all searching, all damaged-and lets them do quietly wonderful things for one another… Like the Greek myth from which the play takes its name, ICARUS is about super-charged dreamers whose wax wings melt when they fly too close to the sun… ICARUS plays out like an inverted Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, though there's no magic to whip up a happy ending. But there are moments of grace that fill the play's one hundred minutes when the characters are momentarily released from their own traumas and attempt to help one another in unassuming but meaningful ways… …in an enchanted setting, dreamers almost win, lovers nearly find happiness, and beauty kisses those who most deserve its fleeting glory. Reality ultimately kills the fairy tale, but nothing can stem the heartfelt charm and warmth that radiates from ICARUS."Chad Jones, Oakland Tribune "Like two battle-weary soldiers, Altagracia and Primitivo plod toward the beach. Primitivo, a boy whose contorted body languishes in a wheelchair, is nudged forward. His sister, half-dragging the chair, is marked by a maroon-colored gnarl that runs across her forehead and down the side of her face. Just then, Primitivo, as cranky as a sleep-deprived two-year-old, begins to cry. The disquieting scene that opens Edwin Sánchez's ICARUS is enough to make anyone uneasy. But what initially seems like some postmodern cross between Beach Blanket Bingo and Freaks, Tod Browning's 1932 cult film, methodically unfolds into a thing of profound beauty. And that's the point of ICARUS: Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder. It's something that runs deeper than the roots of an oak tree, down to some inner sanctuary that provides safety even in the harshest conditions. Sánchez's lyrical, often soaring portrait of dreamers is one of the sweetest, most affirming plays to come through the Bay Area in the last two years… ICARUS is propelled by Sánchez's winning, playful script. His moving text is laden with the nuggets of information…that go into building a richly etched picture. A consummate story-teller, Sánchez also is careful to leave enough blank spaces on his canvas for the audience to fill in from their own imaginations…"Mark de la Viña, San Jose Mercury News

A beautiful young girl who rises her parent's ballroom dancing act to film stardom. Inspired by the life of Rita Hayworth."DIOSA is a naked look back to the era of the casting couch ... [The play] leads the audience into feeling the raw desperation, humiliation and inner chaos of Josefa's life. [It] reminds us of the glitz and glitter of Rita Hayworth's Hollywood. However playwright Edwin Sanchez does not fail to convey that life for women in this profession, in the 1930s, was both ugly and glamorous, bitter as well as sweet." -Christine LeFoll, The Chronicle"Although DIOSA at the Hartford Stage Company utilizes the backstage of a movie set, this is not your upbeat 'makin it big' kind OF 42ND STREET or SINGIN IN THE RAIN. Edwin Sanchez's play that is roughly akin to the life of Rita Hayworth is punctuated with Latin dancing that makes it a kind of Strictly Ballroom for the stage, with a dark edge ... Sanchez's play explores the underbelly of the Golden Age of Hollywood ... is at once a charming and alarming examination of family life, and stardom. The play is most engaging when mocking Hollywood's stock stereotyping." -T E Gilchrist, Metroline"What price Hollywood stardom? For Josefa, a teenage Latina dance, it is nothing less that the surrender of body, identity and psyche. Modeled loosely on film goddess Rita Hayworth, Josefa is the protagonist of Edwin Sanchez's DIOSA, which is infused with Latina dance and set against the backdrop of the tawdry glitter of 1930's Hollywood." -Ellen Pfeiffer, Boston Globe

This collection contains 15 short plays. Here are a few things that reviewers have said about some of his other plays:on ICARUS: "Sánchez's lyrical, often soaring portrait of dreamers is one of the sweetest, most affirming plays..."Mark de la Viña, San Jose Mercury Newson THE ROAD: "Sánchez's excellent, compelling drama...the heart-rending text..."Robert Kent, Next Magazineon UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE: "Since graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 1994, Edwin Sánchez has won more fellowships and foundation grants than most playwrights receive in a lifetime. Go see UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE and you will understand why. The drama's premise is intriguing, and the action often riveting, but what really sets the play apart is the dialogue."Virginia Gerst, Pioneer Press

"The forms of love that dare not speak their names are pretty scarce in this age of the tabloid talk shows. But that hasn't stopped Edwin Sánchez, a new playwright of tremendous emotional conviction... How do you feel, for example, about a thirty year-old Roman Catholic priest in love with a ten year-old boy? The relationship-which, it should probably be noted right away, is never consummated-is at the center of CLEAN.... Mr Sánchez is a wide-eyed, unregenerate romantic who uses what he describes as `impossible' relationships to consider and celebrate the arbitrariness of love. In a sense, the play is like a contemporary MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in which the passion-drunk characters, rather than being sorted into socially acceptable pairs, learn to live in a world ruled by a blind Cupid. It is a theme Mr Sánchez explored in TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS, an unsettling drama about a doomed gay triangle.... He is, in other words, a playwright to watch closely."Ben Brantley, The New York Times