Arriví, Francisco (1915–)

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Arriví, Francisco (1915–)

Francisco Arriví (b. 24 June 1915), Puerto Rican author, dramatist, and theater director. Arriví was born in San Juan and graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 1938. From 1938 to 1941 he taught at Ponce High School, where his students staged his first plays. After his return to San Juan in 1941, he wrote, directed, and translated dramas and was active in the radio productions of the School of the Air until 1948. He studied drama at Columbia University in New York under a Rockefeller grant in 1949 and was programming director for the Puerto Rican government radio station for ten years. A tireless organizer, Arriví established the Tinglado Puertorriqueño experimental theater company and developed the theater program of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, which he directed from 1959 to 1970. He launched the institute's yearly festivals, among them Puerto Rican Theater, International Theater, and the Theater of Ponce. He was instrumental in the creation of the Fine Arts Center in Santurce as a forum for the performing arts in 1981.

In 1959 the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature honored Arriví's Vejigantes (Carnival masks, 1958), a powerful drama about racial identity in Puerto Rico, which formed part of a trilogy of plays on the same theme that Arriví entitled Máscara puertorriqueña (Puerto Rican masquerade, 1959–1960). Other famous plays by Arriví are María Soledad (1947), Caso del muerto en vida (The case of a man dead in life, 1951), Club de solteros (Bachelors' club, 1953), and Cóctel de Don Nadie (The cocktail of Mr. Nobody, 1964). Arriví has also published books of poetry and collections of essays on theater and literature, including Areyto mayor (An indigenous festival, 1966) and Conciencia puertorriqueña del teatro contemporáneo, 1937–1956 (Puerto Rican awareness of contemporary theater, 1967).

See alsoTheater .