Alejandro Licona

Alejandro Licona Padilla (born 1953) is a Mexican dramatist who has won awards for his stage plays and screenplays. Alejandro Licona was born April 12, 1953, in Mexico City. He studied chemical engineering at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City. In 1972, he participated in a playwriting workshop in a center run by Mexican writer Emilio Carballido. In 1976, he began to produce a wide variety of dramatic works, including scripts for film and television. That year, his screenplay La torre acribillada ("The Riddled Tower," with Dante del Castillo), was awarded an honorary mention in the national screenplay competition organized by the Mexican Writers' Guild, SOGEM.

In 1980, his screenplay, Máquina ("Machine") was filmed in Los Angeles, California, and went on to win the Juan Ruiz de Alarcón prize. Four years later, he was awarded a theater fellowship for the Centro Mexicano de Escritores ("Mexican Writers' Center"). In 1987, he assumed charge of the playwriting workshop of the National Polytechnic Institute, and in 1990, was admitted as professor of television screenwriting in the school of the Mexican Writers' Guild. He also taught screenwriting at the Ibero-American University. In 1995, he headed the dramatic workshop for Mexican multimedia conglomerate Televisa's Centro de Capacitación de Escritores ("writer training center").

Among his better known works, Guau, vidas de perros ("Bow-wow, the Lives of Dogs") has been performed 75 times under the direction of Juan Silva López. In 1997, as Licona celebrated his 25th year as a writer, his play El espectáculo macarenazo ("The Macarena-Nose Show," co-written with Tomás Urtusástegui) received a 200th performance in the Foro Coyoacanense.