24 Facts About Nelson Rodrigues

Nelson Falcao Rodrigues was a Brazilian playwright, journalist and novelist.

Nelson Rodrigues went on to write many other seminal plays and today is widely regarded as Brazil's greatest playwright.

Nelson Rodrigues was born in Recife, the capital of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, to Mario Rodrigues, a journalist, and his wife, Maria Esther Falcao.

In 1941, Nelson Rodrigues wrote his first play A Mulher Sem Pecado, to mixed reviews.

Nelson Rodrigues's following play, Vestido de Noiva, was hailed as a watershed in Brazilian theater and is considered among his masterpieces.

Nelson Rodrigues married Elza Bretanha Rodrigues on April 29th, 1940 in Rio de Janeiro.

Nelson Rodrigues was a womanizer and left his wife to date freely.

Nelson Rodrigues had a long term relationship with Yolanda Camejo dos Santos with whom he had three children; Maria Lucia, Sonia and Paulo.

Nelson Rodrigues suspected the two girls weren't his but believed the boy was his son, even dedicating his column on Ultima Hora newspaper to Paulo on the day of his birth.

Nelson Rodrigues became briefly involved with a married woman, Lucia Cruz Lima who became pregnant with Daniela during their relationship.

The relationship deteriorated and Nelson Rodrigues moved out, but continued to support the child.

Nelson Rodrigues was involved with other women before he rekindled with his wife Elza in the late 70's, ironically, around the time that divorce became officially legal in the mostly Catholic nation.

Nelson Rodrigues wrote 17 full-length plays, 9 novels and thousands of short stories.

Nelson Rodrigues was most influential as a playwright, and his plays include Toda Nudez Sera Castigada, Doroteia, and Beijo no Asfalto, all considered classics of the Brazilian stage.

Nelson Rodrigues' plays were divided into three categories by critic Sabato Magaldi: psychological, mythical and Carioca tragedies.

The latter plays, which include some of his later and best-known productions, are mostly tragicomedies where Nelson Rodrigues explored the lives of Rio's lower-middle class, a population never deemed worthy of the stage before him.

In spite of his success as a playwright, Nelson Rodrigues never dedicated himself exclusively to the theater.

Nelson Rodrigues wrote the column six days a week eleven years, writing an estimated 2,000 of these stories.

Nelson Rodrigues died on December 21st, 1980, at 68 years of age, of cardiac and respiratory complications.

Nelson Rodrigues is buried in Cemiterio de Sao Joao Batista, in Botafogo.

Much of Nelson Rodrigues's career was filled with controversy, a state of affairs he often courted and even relished.

Nelson Rodrigues called his theater "the theater of the unpleasant" and had an almost messianic conviction that it was his duty to hold a mirror up to society's hypocrisies and to expose the darkness in the audience's heart.

Actually, in terms of style, Nelson Rodrigues' work is a kind of belatedly Expressionism, combining an appearance of empirical reality surrounding a kernel of mythologized, intense and unrealistic - to the point of "cartoonish absurdity" - psychological dramatic action.

Nelson Rodrigues successfully intervened to help release well-known leftist Helio Pellegrino from jail and testified at a military tribunal in favor of jailed student activist Wladimir Palmeira.