Joan Yago receives the National Dramatic Literature Award

BarcelonaThe playwright Joan Yago (Barcelona, 1987), one of the founders of the company La Calòrica, is the winner of the National Dramatic Literature Prize for La brama del cérvol (a unique experience in an incomparable setting).The jury selected his work for "the power of a surprising, risky, and deliberately delirious text that dialogues with our present from a deep existential and political crisis." This award is granted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and is endowed with 30,000 euros.

For the jury, La brama del cérvol,which premiered at the Teatre Lliure in Montjuïc on May 21, 2025, "stands as a choral work of intertwined stories, marked by the moral contradictions of its hilarious characters." It also highlights the "sarcastic tone that at times embraces metatheatricality." "The playwright proposes a risky form with great popular reach," the jury adds. Specifically, as can be read in the presentation of the play, the action takes place in an old mountain hotel, isolated in a valley, where several characters meet, drawn by very different promises. Some have gone there to listen to the stag's rut, advertised by the guides as a "unique experience"; others, to close a real estate deal, save a marriage in crisis, or celebrate a grandmother's birthday. Arriving in the same space are also a group of stage creators gathered for a symposium on the capacity of political theater to transform society, while two girls get lost in the woods looking for a secret party – and, according to some versions, an ancient drug – that is to be held in the valley.

A very prolific author

Joan Yago is a graduate in directing and dramaturgy from the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona. Among his previous works are Els ocells, Sis personatges - Homenatge a Tomàs Giner (2018 Critics' Award), Fairfly (2018 Max Award for Best New Author and 2017 Butaca Award for Best Text), You say tomato (Serra d'Or Critics' Award for Best Theatrical Text, 2016), Un lloc comú (2014 Ciutat d'Alzira Award), Bluf (2014 Quim Masó Award), Sobre el fenómeno de los trabajos de mierda, Aneboda - The Show, La Nau dels Bojos, L'Editto Bulgaro, Martingala, No soy Dean Moriarty and Feísima enfermedad y muy triste muerte de la reina Isabel I. In 2021, he received the Butaca Award for Best Text for De què parlem mentre no parlem de tota aquesta merda. He is a writing professor at the Eòlia ESAD School and at the Sala Beckett Dramaturgy Workshop, and creator and screenwriter of the series Mai neva a Ciutat for IB3TV.