UPDATED: Carlos Fuentes Has Died

I am just processing the news that one of my dearest mentors, the great Mexican author and public intellectual Carlos Fuentes, has passed away--the latest links will be appearing here.

During the 1980s, I worked as a research and graduate teaching assistant for Carlos at Cornell University--it was there that we formed a friendship and a collaboration that changed my life forever. I have documented some of this here on the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog in these postings.

Among the many amazing and magical things that happened during the incredible semester (including the never-to-be-forgotten memory of dancing alongside Carlos at a Latina/o party, downtown Ithaca, at an American Legion Hall {picture it!}), was that I made a lifelong friendship with the talented American playwright, Oliver Mayer--now an Associate Professor in Theatre @ USC.  He and talked the other day about our friendship with Carlos--our shared loss, sadness, and memories.  It was good to talk to Oliver; he's like the brother I never had.

In any event, Oliver posted something on his No Passport Yahoo Groups site that I would like to share it with you here:

Carlos Fuentes was my teacher and friend at Cornell in the mid 80s. He taught me so much about being a writer and being an educator. The man was ferocious with life, dashing, brilliant, curious, and constantly engaged in the politics and culture of our times. I loved him and his family--his beautiful wife and his two children, now tragically both dead before their time. The Nobel Prize should have gone to Carlos many times over. Another artist would have shut down or grown bitter, but Carlos always chose the higher road in his work. His prize is his body of writing, his enormous artistic compassion, and the legion of young artists who learned from his example -- not only as a writer but as a man.

Love, Oliver

Oliver Mayer
Associate Professor
USC School of Theatre
Faculty Master
Parkside International Residential College
Affiliated Faculty: Dept of American Studies and Ethnicity
olivermayer.com

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A posting of Fuentes family pictures has appeared here.

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Here's a recent BBC Mundo piece and streaming interview with Fuentes from December 2011--the streaming video appears below the imagelink.

FILO AL FUEGO | BLADE TO THE HEAT invading South Florida!!! See it if you can!!!!

Miami bound? Here's something you have to do while there.... Oliver Mayer's play is amazing! And not just because I edited a book that includes it! {ok, maybe a little bit! ;-0}... check out the graphics, here, below, and then go here for more info!

XicanOSMOSIS: Estilo Teatro | Oliver Mayer

My good friend Oliver Mayer, whose work is anthologized and studied to death in my second book, an edited collection entitled The Hurt Business, is back in the news!

Published: November 26,2008
Critically Acclaimed USC Playwright Professor Oliver Mayer Has Something to Say

Critically acclaimed playwright Oliver Mayer will jump right into the new year with the world premiere of two of his plays: *"Dias y Flores" *and *" Laws of Sympathy"*.

On January 16, 2009 he will world premiere at the Company of Angels Theatre his highly anticipated play *"Dias y Flores" *- a meditation on Love: straight, gay and filial. The play directed by *Luis Alfaro* stars an all Latin ensemble cast including his wife, Actress *Marlene Forte*, Mel Rodriguez, Alejandro Rose Garcia, and Justin Huen. Testing which love is strongest, the play seeks the musical magic of love. Its story is loosely based on "A Thousand and One Nights, and the music of Cuban Silvio Rodriguez and Beethoven. It also looks at the changing face of Latinos - Caribbean to Mexican. What does it mean to be Latino and in love?

Mayer who is best known for *his plays that investigate the Latino *and more specifically the* Chicano experience* throughout American history has had two collections of his work published as of 2008: *"The Hurt Business" *and *"Oliver Mayer: Collected Plays"* . It's only natural that Mayer is known as a Chicano playwright, being *himself half Mexican*. His career has undeniably been very much enriched by being a product of two cultures. A Professor of Dramatic Writing at USC School of Theatre, Oliver Mayer is a playwright driven by the dramatic engine of both the world around him and the one constantly turning inside of him.


He is a recent winner of a *USC Zumberge Award* for the creation of a new original six-play cycle that portrayed how various epochs of music affected American History; and the recipient of a Gerbode Grant to write the libretto for "America Tropical", a new opera composed by David Conte. He is the screenwriter for "Dare to Love Me", a movie about the life of Tango singer Carlos Gardel which begins principal photography in 2009 - the film stars Raoul Bova and Lindsay Lohan.

Mayer 's claim to fame is the acclaimed *"Blade to Heat"* which premiered at the Public Theater in New York City. The revised version premiered on the Mark Taper Forum mains stage and subsequent productions have taken place in San Francisco, Chicago and Mexico City.

He is certifiably *an important voice in American Theatre *and his work is extremely relevant today because it comes from a multicultural background - not to mention the fact that over time his artistic creations will come to represent a rich historical record of who we are and where we're headed as citizens of the United States.

Mayer describes himself as a playwright with the emphasis on "play". "All these plays are dramas, " says Mayer, "but hopefully they're really funny along the way - the best way to solve stuff is with a smile".

Mayer is a graduate of Cornell and Columbia Universities, and attended Worcester College, Oxford. His literary archive can be accessed through Stanford University Libraries. His other well known plays include THE ROAD TO LOS ANGELES, BANANAS AND PEACHFUZZ, BOLD AS LOVE, THE RIGHTING MOMENT and ROCIO! A PESAR DE TODO.

source!

Oliver Mayer Podcast

My new book on the work of Oliver Mayer is out and selling well--that's good for Hyperbole Books, an imprint of SDSU Press who published the collection. (full disclosure: I am an editor for SDSU Press and the crazy ringleader of Hyperbole). In any event, a nice conversation between Carlos Manuel and Mayer has appeared on the 'net; click the image above to be transported there!

Oliver Mayer, Live @ SDSU Today at 4pm in the Little Theatre

New Oliver Mayer Collection is Out and Available on Amazon!

I am very excited that the volume of works by LA Playwright Oliver Mayer, The Hurt Business: Oliver Mayer's Early Works [+] Plus, that I edited is out and available on Amazon.com. The anthology has the full scripts of Blade to the Heat, Young Valiant, and Joy of the Desolate, in addition to critical essays by Howard Stein and Jorge Huerta and interviews, photographs, poetry, and theater ephemera from Mayer's private collection. More on the book is available here.

Mayer's work embodies the XicanOsmotic throbbings I began documenting in the final pages of Tex[t]-Mex, mixing, breeding, fusing aesthetic dramatic traces from Latin America, Mexico, the United States, and beyond. Mayer's blend of eros, violence, machismo, macha divas, show business, and Chicano angst are hard to beat. He really is one of our unique American writers.

Check it out if you can!

If you are travailing in academe and would like to review the book for a journal just send me an email the next time you get a chance and I will work with our crack staff at Hyperbole Books to see that you get a review copy! You can peek at the first 31 pages or so here! ¡Gracias!

If you are reading this and live in the Bay Area, make your way over to Thick Description for its revival of Blade to the Heat, now in production. Here's a quick take on what's presently going down Thick! Lastly, pay no attention to rumors you might have read concerning Madonna and the film version of Blade'--for the moment, at least, she is pursuing other pieces.