Actor and theater director Manel Dueso dies

BarcelonaManel Dueso, actor, director, playwright and poet with an extensive and prestigious theatrical curriculum, has died this Tuesday at 73 years of age. He directed more than one hundred plays by authors such as Shakespeare, Chekhov –his great predilection–, Molière and Beckett, among many others, and wrote more than twenty plays, a production that validates him as a top-tier stage animal. He also performed on television, acting in series such as La Riera, Nit i dia, Cuéntame, Isabel, El cor de la ciutat, Secrets de família and Laberint d'ombres, and in cinema he worked under the direction of directors such as Jaume Balagueró (Mientras duermes) and Manel Huerga (Salvador).

Born in Sabadell in 1953, Dueso was a precocious actor and took to the stage for the first time at five years old at the Sant Vicenç Parish Center, in the Creu Alta neighborhood. His passion for the stage came from his grandmother, a great theater enthusiast, but at 10 years old his parents forbade him from doing theater, although he continued training in secret. After completing his military service in Lleida, at 21 he bet everything on theater and entered the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona to study acting. Some of his teachers were Carlos Gandolfo, José Sanchis Sinisterra and Pierre Chabert. As a director and author, however, he considered himself self-taught.

Dueso did street, guerrilla, and laboratory theater and co-founded several companies. He was also one of the founders of the Sala Beckett. As a theater director, he did not shy away from the densest and most complex authors: he directed works by Edward Bond, Connor McPherson, Bernard-Marie Koltès, and Jean Genet. In this capacity, he directed top-tier performers such as Julieta Serrano, Mercè Sampietro, Emma Vilarasau, Blanca Portillo, Montse Germán, Daniel Brühl, Javier Cámara, Tristán Ulloa, Pablo Derqui, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Gonzalo de Castro, and Marc Martínez.

In 1991, he debuted as a playwright at the Sala Beckett with Per a no res. He also premiered his own works at the Festival Grec, the Mercat de les Flors, La Villarroel, and the Sala Muntaner, and his scripts have been performed in Madrid, Cuba, Colombia, and England. And at the end of last year, he premiered Jambo Bwana at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, inspired by a personal memory from the 80s, when he met a young Gambian man who had become a quadriplegic while working cutting down trees in Sant Hilari Sacalm.