Argentine playwright Roberto Cossa, co-founder of country's "New Realism" movement, dies at 89 [View all]

Renowned playwright Roberto “Tito” Cossa, an icon of local independent theater, has passed away at age 89, author-rights association Argentores announced on Thursday.

A sharp and sardonic social commentator, Cossa penned such Argentine classics like La Nona, Yepeto, and Tute Cabrero.

Born in 1934 in Buenos Aires, Cossa began his professional career as a journalist, writing for top local newspapers as well as the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina. He produced his first play, Nuestro fín de semana (‘Our Weekend’), in 1964 - but it wasn’t until 1976 that he decided to focus on dramaturgy.

Cossa quickly stood out as one of the country’s finest exponents of a movement known as “New Realism” along with fellow director and playwright Carlos Gorostiza, who would direct Cossa’s 1976 hit La Nona.

The play is a grotesque comedy about a hundred-year-old Italian Argentine woman who burdens her working-class family with her senile dementia and endless appetite. An Argentine theater classic, Cossa later adapted into a screenplay for the 1979 film version directed by Héctor Olivera.

With Carlos Somigliana (who would later have a prominent role in the 1985 trial against top dictatorship officials), Cossa co-wrote the screenplay for Fernando Ayala’s 1982 social drama El arreglo ('The Deal') - about a working-class man who finds himself in a moral conundrum when a corrupt city official offers him to extend a much-needed water line in his neighborhood in exchange for a bribe.

An outspoken advocate for social justice and human rights, Cossa was a founding member of Teatro Abierto ('Open Theater') - a theater collective created in 1981 that challenged the military dictatorship.

The group premiered their first festival on July 28, 1981, at the Picadero Theater. The evening programme featured the play Gris de ausencia ('Pale of Absence'), Cossa’s tale of immigration, exile, and identity.

The dictatorship firebombed the Picadero shortly after, forcing the group to relocate.

At: https://buenosairesherald.com/society/argentine-playwright-roberto-tito-cossa-dies-at-89

Argentine playwright and director Roberto Cossa, 1934-2024.

"The theater is there to awaken sensibilities in the spectator," Cossa noted in a 2020 interview. "To entertain or seduce him or her - to make them laugh or cry."