Rosa Victòria Gras i Perfontan (Vallgorguina, 1933), a playwright, poet, scriptwriter, translator, linguist, and teacher, has a degree in Catalan Philology and a PhD with a thesis titled Aportació al lèxic de Verdaguer (University of Barcelona - Department of Catalan Philology, 1995).

She was head of production for the Curs de català parlat (Spoken Catalan course, winner of the 1977 Ondes de Ràdio Prize) for Ràdio Peninsular, which was directed by Antoni Comas from the Chair of Catalan LanRpguage and Literature, and she was also scriptwriter and creator of the television course Català amb nosaltres (winner of the 1980 Òmnium Cultural Prize), which was broadcast in Spanish television in Catalonia. The programme was shown from 1976 to the early 1980s and included Carme Serrallonga in the team of teachers who produced it. From 1982 until 2012 Rosa Victòria Gras taught Elocution and Diction at the Catalan Theatre Institute.

She combined teaching with her work in the theatre as a playwright and is the author of works including El crit dins una capsa de cotó (1982, winner of the 1981 Lisístrata Prize), La llengua tallada (1989), La vigília (1991, winner of the 1988 Cassandra Prize), La nit de les dues llunes (1990, winner of the Recull-teatre Prize), Somniar la vida (1996, for which she had been awarded the 1980 Santos Antolí Prize), Balneari Celeste (1996), and Atracciones Gasparino (2007). In 2020 the Catalan Theatre Institute brought together five of her plays in the volume Cinc textos de Rosa Victòria Gras i Perfontan. She has also published the collection of poems Finestrelles d’autobús (Poemes de 1991) (1996), and a complete collection of her poetry La roda de la fortuna (2018). Moreover, she produced, with Coralina Colom, the diction manuals L'actor i la dicció (1997) and Exercicis de laboratori de veu i de dicció (1998), as well as translating into Catalan texts by Botho Strauss, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Caryl Churchill, John Webster, and Edward Gordon Craig.

She is a member of honour of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).


Web page: Toni Terrades for AELC.
Photographs: © Author’s personal files and Rosa Victòria Gras. Dimensió creativa de la llengua. Barcelona: Institut del Teatre, 2018.
Translation: Julie Wark.