Vicente Sanches

Playwright and poet. A secondary school teacher, he has been publishing a copious body of dramatic work since 1958, only a small part of which has reached the stage. This work is characterized by a curious fusion of the Pirandellian dialectic of being and appearances with the ambiguity of modern theater of the absurd, taken in his most recent plays to a degree of explosive incandescence. The play O Passado e o Presente (1971), which the author classified as an «insane comedy of twins» in three acts, was adapted for cinema by Manoel de Oliveira. A Birra do Morto (1973) is perhaps his work of greatest resonance and significance.