For the first time in more than 40 years, Cuba’s most important living playwrights from the 1960s will gather at a conference that will explore a unique and paradoxical decade in Cuban theater through its living protagonists.

Protagonistas de Los 60 will take place on Saturday, March 27 (International Theater Day) at 9:30 a.m. in the Roberto C. Goizueta Pavilion in the University of Miami’s Otto G. Richter Library.

UM’s Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute have collaborated to present the event, which will include playwrights Antón Arrufat (Cuba), Carucha Camejo (Cuba-USA), Abelardo Estorino (Cuba), Eduardo Manet (Cuba-France), and Matías Montes Huidobro (Cuba-USA).

The morning session, led by designers Eduardo Arrocha (Cuba), Jesús Ruiz (Cuba), and Rafael Mirabal (Cuba-USA), will be dedicated to stage and costume design in the 1960s theater movement, focusing on the collaboration of visual artists and theater designers.

The afternoon panels will address the Cuban theater’s early paths, splendor, and obstacles from the perspective of playwrights who emerged in that period (Camejo, Estorino, and Montes Huidobro) and playwrights who returned to Cuba in 1959 to join the theater movement (Arrufat and Manet).

Lillian Manzor, director of UM’s Latin American Studies Program and the Cuban Theater Digital Archive; Uva de Aragón, associate director of FIU’s Cuban Research Institute; Alberto Sarraín, theater director of La Má Teodora; and Dinorah Pérez Rementería, art critic and UM graduate student, have organized the conference.

The event is sponsored by UM’s CLAS, the Joseph Carter Memorial Fund in Modern Languages and Literatures, the University of Miami Libraries’ Cuban Heritage Collection, and FIU’s Cuban Research Institute.

Seating is limited. RSVP to [email protected]. For more information, call 305-284-1854.