Thank you!
Thanks to Teatro Audaz in San Antonio for making such a bold, risky production of my adaptation of García Lorca's classic tragedy. It was a joy to visit San Antonio and meet this troupe of theater-makers in person.
​
Below, you can watch the teaser trailer for the Chicago world premiere of ¡Bernarda! which Teatro Vista produced and Steppenwolf co-presented at their 1700 theater.
​​
I am forever grateful to all these two fantastic theater companies!
Emilio
Emilio Williams is a bilingual Spanish/English, award-winning non-fiction writer, playwright, translator, and educator. His writing and scholarship explore experimental dialogues with literary traditions.
His non-fiction work combines rigorous archival research, life writing, and criticism. His essays have appeared most recently in Slag Glass City, The Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, Brevity Magazine, Writing Disorder, Hinterland Magazine, Imagined Theatres, Transatlantica Journal, and the anthology Beyond Queer Words 2021. In 2026, his contribution to the volume Autotheory and Its Others will be released by Punctum Books.
​
¡Bernarda!, Emilio’s latest play, is a bilingual trans-adaption of Federico García Lorca’s classic tragedy. It was co-presented by Teatro Vista and Steppenwolf 1700 in 2023 and produced by Teatro Audaz in 2024. His other plays have been produced in Argentina, Estonia, France, Ireland, México, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Washington DC.
He teaches at The Theater School of DePaul University and the Department of English at Dominican University in Chicago. In higher education, he is passionate about teaching first-year courses and mentoring bilingual and bicultural students and those with limited English proficiency. He is also committed to the development and promotion of Open Educational Resources.
He offers a Playwriting Intensive Course in Paris every year and advises other playwrights on the development process of new plays.
Emilio holds a BA in Film and Video and an MFA in Writing. He is a proud board member of The Physical Theater Festival in Chicago.
"Emilio Williams enjoys a good meta-theatrical challenge."
The Washington Post
​
awards
​
Emilio and his colleagues at The Theater School of Depaul University just won a grant from the State of Illinois Secretary of State to develop Open Educational Resources for theater students.
​
His literary essays have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, in 2020 and in 2024.
​
From 2020 to 2024, he was a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists.
In 2019, he received an MFA in Writing Teaching Fellowship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The same year he won a Fellowship Award judged by Prageeta Sharma at SAIC for his upcoming play Elektra Problematika. (Commissioned by Teatro Luna West)
His show Medea’s Got Some Issues (in the version starring Ana Asensio) won Best International Show at United Solo Festival, Off-Broadway, New York City, and the Jury’s Special Mention at Monomaffia Festival in Estonia.
In 2010, Emilio Williams’ hit comedy Camas y Mesas (Tables and Beds) was selected among 80 plays from 12 countries as the winner of the IV Premio El Espectáculo Teatral.