Ramón Griffero

Politically, Griffero is on the left, as his work reflects. In his youth he participated in the Revolutionary Students' Front, promoted by the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and in Popular Unity. In 2016 he joined the Democratic Revolution, a party that proclaimed him a parliamentary candidate for the V Costa constituency in the November 2017 elections.

As a professor, he has taught acting, voice, and direction classes at the School of Theater of the University of Chile, and given workshops. Griffero's works have been performed by various national and foreign theater groups and have participated in international festivals in various countries; they have also been translated and published in a number of languages. In addition, numerous European and Latin American university theses have studied their scenic conceptions. Griffero was director of the Theater School of University ARCIS from 2001 to 2014, and beginning in December of that year he directed the Camilo Henríquez Theater. Since 2017 he has held the position of Director of the Chilean National Theater [es], belonging to the University of Chile.

Ramón Griffero returned to Chile in 1982, after nine years of residence in Europe. Shortly after his arrival, he began to present works in which he revealed his creative vision: a dramaturgy of strong sensations and scenic breaks, in which the traditional narrative structure is broken by the introduction of language based on poetry. From his first works, such as Recuerdos del hombre con su tortuga and, especially with the works mounted together with the company Teatro Fin de Siglo such as Historia de un galpón abandonado and Cinema-Utoppia, Griffero introduced a subversive dramaturgy that marked a new direction towards greater scenic freedom.

Throughout his long career, with works written and directed by him such as Río abajo and Éxtasis, Griffero has managed to consolidate his own style, which has been recognized by critics and the public, both in Chile and abroad. His works have as a common denominator an accentuated plastic character and a recurring use of cinematographic devices. These features demonstrate the experimental vocation of his work, whose spirit of transgression has remained intact even after the political uncertainty of the 1980s.

In 1978 he studied at the National Film Institute of Brussels, where he made the short film L'Escargots, and the following year he entered the Theater Studies Center of the University of Louvain, from which he graduated with a Master's Degree. It was there where he made his debut as a playwright and theater director when, in 1980, he directed his first play Opera por un naugrage, with the University Theater.

He entered the University of Chile in 1971 to study sociology, but two years later, following the coup d'état of General Augusto Pinochet against the socialist government of Salvador Allende, he went into exile in London. There, in Britain, he finished his career with a Bachelor of Arts degree in social sciences from the University of Essex.

Ramón Griffero Sánchez (born 29 November 1954) is a Chilean playwright and theater director, one of the most prominent in his country. He is considered an emblematic figure of the national theater during the 1980s; his earliest productions are associated with cultural and political resistance to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.