BIO

His work enters the repertoire of the Comedia Nacional de Uruguay in 2003 and 2007 with his plays .45' and Kiev and in 2022 with his play El salto de Darwin. Among his best known titles are Slaughter, .45', Kiev, Barbarie, Kassandra, El salto de Darwin, Tebas Land, Ostia, La ira de Narciso, Ebramido de Düsseldorf, Cuando pases sobre mi tumba, Cartografía de unadesaparición, Las flores del mal, Tráfico, Memento mori, Divina invención, Zoo and Tierra. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Most of his texts, besides being published and performed in his country of origin, have also been translated into different languages and published in different countries. In the last few years his theater has been performed in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Peru, United States, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Portugal, Switzerland, Latvia, Belgium, Turkey, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

Specialized in the systems of performative writing, he has directed in different Latin American and European cities multiple workshops and research that always culminate in shows, performances and public interventions of great call as was the case of Scenes of Penitences and Autopsies, 10 playwrights in the public square, Louvre/Banlieue, Africa Street, Susurrantes and Campo Blanco together with the Uruguayan photographer Matilde Campodónico.

In parallel to his work as a playwright and director, Blanco carries out an intense academic activity that has led him to give seminars, courses and conferences in different university and cultural institutions in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

In 2013 he was appointed by the Carlos III University of Madrid, Artistic Director of the European project Crossing Stages, which brought together for two years different universities and artistic institutions from different European countries. That same year he was invited by the National Comedy of Uruguay to direct the First Seminar of National Dramaturgy and in 2014 the National Institute of Performing Arts of Uruguay entrusted him with the direction of a scenic research that Blanco will carry out for a whole year with eight researchers and that will revolve around the theme of Autofiction: saying oneself on stage.

In August 2013 he premieres Tebas Land, in 2015 Ostia, a text that is performed by himself with his sister actress Roxana Blanco, and La ira de Narciso with the performance of playwright, director and actor Gabriel Calderón. In 2017 he premieres his autofiction El bramido de Düsseldorf in Montevideo and in 2019 he premieres Tráfico in Bogotá, Cuando pases sobre mi tumba in Montevideo and Memento mori in Barcelona.

In May 2024 he is distinguished in Athens with the Zoenadrama Award for Best Playwright and in August 2024 he directs his show Confesiones in London before directing it in September of the same year at the Comedia Nacional de Uruguay. That same year his text Kassandra is made into an opera and premiered at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

In recent years his shows have toured international festivals around the world and his theater has been staged on five continents, making him one of the most widely represented Spanish-language playwrights of his time.

AUTOFICTIONAL CONFERENCE

I decided to designate this type of writing with the term autofictional conference, since it deals with materials where two opposite rhetorical modalities intersect: conference and autofiction.

I must admit that what attracts me most in this whole undertaking is the union in the same literary support of two discursive modes that besides being opposites are also antagonistic: where the conference has to respond to maxims of objectivity, clarity and precision by means of an orderly discourse, autofiction -which is lying the truth about oneself- will be subjective, confused and diffuse through a disorderly discourse.

The autofictional lecture is therefore the art of bringing together the objective and the subjective, the public and the intimate. The result will always be a hybrid word that has the prudence of the academic and the exaltation of the artistic. In a certain way it will be a word that knows and does not know, that is to say, a word that enables knowledge and at the same time suspends it: a word that suffers from its knowledge and enjoys its ignorance.

The union of these opposing modes that end up merging into a single literary reality is deeply attractive to me: I have always been attracted to the hybrid, that which is neither one thing nor the other, but both at the same time. I have said it on several occasions: I have always been captivated by the beauty of the centaur, which is horse and human at the same time.

 Sergio Blanco

Following the line of autofiction in which the French-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco has been dabbling for some years now, his text Divina invención o la celebración del amor is a monologue that is interpreted by the author himself in the form of a lecture.
Teniendo como único soporte escénico un escritorio y una proyección visual en donde irán sucediendo toda una serie de pinturas de Francis Bacon intervenidas por Philippe Koscheleff, el texto nos irá haciendo partícipes de una exposición sobre el amor.

As the reading progresses, we will discover that what captures us in this original format that Blanco has invented and that he designates with the term of autofictional conference is that it speaks not only of love itself, but of the intimate way in which its author lives love, experiencing it from the enjoyment, delight and pleasure, but also suffering it from the torment, pain and suffering. This is what makes this text not to be limited to the simple praise of love, but to be able to delve into the celebration of those dark areas that make it a tormenting and overwhelming experience.

De esta forma Divina invención o la celebración del amor se irá construyendo como un texto en donde el asunto del amor se proyectará con total libertad hacia zonas inesperadas e imprevistas. Consultado sobre la temáticas del texto, Blanco ha explicado: “Si bien es cierto que, como lo profesa Lope, el amor es una ciencia que nos hace sabios también es cierto que nos conecta con nuestra parte más bestial. Los momentos de mi vida en que más me he acercado a lo animal fueron aquellos en los que he estado enamorado. De todos modos, más allá de que el amor esté entre la civilización y la barbarie, la sabiduría y la rudeza, lo humano y lo brutal, creo que es una experiencia sublime que siempre nos termina transformando”

Following the line of autofiction in which the French-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco has been dabbling for some years now, his text Las flores del mal o la celebración de la violencia is a monologue that is interpreted by the author himself in the form of a lecture.
With only a high table, a bench, a lectern and a permanent projection of the painting Samson blinded by the Philistines by Rembrandt, intervened by the visual artist Miguel Grompone, the text makes us participants in an exhibition on violence and literature that is striking for its radicality and singularity.

As the reading progresses, we will discover that what captures us in this original format that Blanco has invented and that he designates with the term autofictional conference is that it speaks not only of violence and literature itself, but also of the intimate way in which its author has lived literary violence, suffering it from suffering and at the same time experiencing it from pleasure. This is what makes this text not limit itself to the obvious condemnation of violence -which of course there is, and with great fervor-, but it can also bask in the celebration of that literary violence that seeks beauty in evil.

In this way, Las flores del mal o la celebración de la violencia will be built as a text in which the complex issue of violence, from the moment it is approached from the literary point of view, escapes the castrating moral to project itself with total freedom towards the poetic.
As Sergio Blanco explains in his lecture: “Literature would then be the place that humanity would have found to talk about violence. To say it. To relate it. The spatial-literary would thus enable violence through its poetization.”

Following the line of autofiction in which the French-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco has been dabbling for some years now, his text Memento Mori or the celebration of death is a monologue that is interpreted by the author himself in the form of a lecture.
With a desk and a visual projection as the only scenic support, where a series of photographs by the famous Uruguayan photographer Matilde Campodónico will be shown, the text will make us participate in an exhibition on death that impacts us with its sharpness and beauty.

As the reading progresses, we will discover that what captures us in this original format that Blanco has invented and that he designates with the term autofictional conference is that it speaks not only of death itself, but of the intimate way in which its author lives death, suffering it from pain and torment and at the same time experiencing it from enjoyment and delectation. This is what makes this text not to be limited to the predictable and comfortable condemnation of death, but to bask in the celebration of a phenomenon that, according to its author, is the one that most connects us with life.

In this way Memento Mori or the celebration of death will be built as a text where death is approached with calm, lightness and beauty, thus bringing us closer to a peaceful idea of dying. As Blanco explains in his text: “Death does not destroy, but eternalizes: it eternalizes us. By inscribing us in a non-time, death inscribes us in a form of eternity. It takes us out of time. It tears us away from the unbearable journey of becoming and in this way, by touching us, death makes us immortal: we cease to be responsible for the present to gain access to that time of no time. That time without chronology. Without succession. That time without order. Without numbers. That time that abandons time. Death does not end us, but begins: surely that is why I aspire for my corpse to be the most beautiful in the world”.