Lucía Carballal

ARTIST’S PROFILE

Lucía Carballal (Madrid, 1984) wrote her first play at the age of 19 for a university theatre group and has devoted herself to theatre-making ever since.

She began her training as a playwright at RESAD in Madrid and continued her studies at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona and the Universität der Künste in Berlin, determined to experience different theatrical traditions, languages and contexts in search of her own voice. During these nomadic years, her first works were staged on the independent theatre circuits of Barcelona and Madrid.

In 2012, her play Mejor historia que la nuestra was presented at Sala Kubik and Teatro Lara in Madrid. This project brought her work to the attention of critics for the first time and opened the door to various grants and writing programmes that allowed her to continue developing her practice.

In the following years, she wrote, among other works, A España no la va a conocer ni la madre que la parió, in collaboration with Víctor Sánchez Rodríguez, for which they received the Eurodram Prize and a nomination for the Max Award for Best New Production.

Los temporales (2016) was her first work to premiere at a public theatre, the Centro Dramático Nacional, and from that point onwards she began to be regarded as one of the most representative playwrights of her generation. Her play Una vida americana (2017) premiered at Teatro Galileo and received a Max Award nomination for Best Playwriting. This was followed by La resistencia (Teatros del Canal, 2018), Las bárbaras (Centro Dramático Nacional, 2019), and the short piece La actriz y la incertidumbre, which premiered as part of the Centro Dramático Nacional’s La Pira project. In 2021, these five works were brought together in the book Las últimas, published by the prestigious publishing house La uña rota, with whom she has collaborated ever since.

This publication marked the beginning of a new phase in which she started directing her own work, integrating the text into a broader conception of performance and exploring the full range of theatrical expression.

This new period began with the premiere of Los pálidos (2023) at the Centro Dramático Nacional, for which she received the Best Emerging Director Award from the Asociación de Directores de Escena. She subsequently wrote and directed La fortaleza (2024) at the Teatro de la Comedia, which was invited to both the Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico de Almagro and Barcelona’s Grec Festival. Her third production, Los nuestros, a co-production between the Centro Dramático Nacional and the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, received a Max Award for Best Stage Direction and was nominated for Best Playwriting and Best Theatre Production, among other categories. 

Her plays have been staged or presented as rehearsed readings in Italy, the UK, Mexico, Venezuela, Uruguay and the United States.

Lucía Carballal has also taught numerous courses in playwriting and screenwriting at institutions including the Centro Dramático Nacional, Centre Dramatique National d’Angers – Le Quai, Sala Beckett, Teatro de la Abadía, ECAM, ESCAC and Universidad Carlos III.

Alongside her work in theatre, she works as a screenwriter for film and television.

Read about Lucía‘s residency project below in her words…

During my stay at La Moissie, I will be preparing my new production, Un drama romántico, which will soon premiere in Barcelona (Teatre Lliure) and Madrid (Centro Dramático Nacional). The writing of the play and the conception of the staging go hand in hand, and I know that both will be influenced by the surroundings and by the people I meet there.