Lost in (cuir)ness: Mario Cruz, ¿una dramaturgia chilena en desvío?

This essay examines Mario Cruz’s playwriting from the 1960s to the 1990s, situated at the intersection of theater, journalism, and mass culture. Through works such as Un cesante honorable, El extraño (1975), and Pablo y Alicia son novios (1994), along with his novel El Príncipe (1972), the study explores how his theater engages with popular culture, melodrama, and an aesthetics of excess. Structured around three key periods, the analysis concludes that Cruz navigates traditions diagonally, appropriating their codes only to subvert and strain their limits—a gesture resonant with queer and cuir as forms of aesthetic disruption and dissent.