- Ignacio Ibarra Mazari my grandfather and my grandmother, theater actress on stage- “Just a few months ago, he had the pleasure of staging the world premiere of a minor work by Rodolfo Usigli; only a few weeks ago, he gave the national premiere of a short comedy by Samuel Beckett. What will time be like? Because with all these achievements, the public still remains unaware of this tenacious, dedicated, optimistic, and incorruptible effort by Ignacio Ibarra. Sometimes one is tempted to think that Ignacio Ibarra needs a psychiatrist; someone to tell him about his psychological tensions, which cause him to lash out for no reason; that is, someone to come and tell him: sir, you are a masochist who enjoys being attacked by others. A masochist because, in proportion to his effort, his dedication to the theater, what he receives are the slaps of the conspicuous absence of the audience. Ignacio Ibarra is beyond help. Ignacio Ibarra continues trying to fulfill what he considers his life's work. Ignacio Ibarra continues aspiring to serve his community with high-caliber theatrical performances, with a dramatic message that transcends the ambitions, interests, and curiosities of that community. To put it simply: Ignacio Ibarra directs… Writer, teacher, and promoter of Mexican dramatic arts. He fostered and disseminated theater in Mexico. He apprenticed with Miguel F. Torres in the discipline of aesthetic direction and with Miguel Flûrscheim Tromer in theatrical studies. In 1947, he was appointed assistant head of the Theater Department of the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), Mexico City; however, he was dismissed from his position for staging Rodolfo Usigli's *El gesticulador*. //Enciclopedia de la literatura mexicana But here’s the thing, he didn’t quit. Oh no. In 1948, he founded the University Theater in Puebla, a very popular and successful theater to date. In 1951, he turned his department into the Odiseo Studio Theater — named after a man who took ten years to get home, which feels about right for theater folk. And when money dried up, he kept going. When institutions shrugged him off, he kept going. In 1953, he became director of the Department of Dramatic Arts at the university, building a home for drama in a world that didn’t always wanna hear it. Nowadays the theatre is described “open to the public, offering a variety of cultural activities that serve as a forum for students. Beyond being a space where the arts converge for communication among people, the theater is a vehicle for the comprehensive expression of a community's culture”. The Odiseo Studio Theater, aimed to represent the finest European, American, and Mexican theater, showcasing avant-garde schools through select works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Eugene O’Neill, Bertolt Brecht, William Saroyan, Anton Chekhov, Patrick Hamilton, Rodolfo Usigli, Xavier Villaurrutia, Juan José Arreola, Emilio Carballido, and Humberto Robles. Ibarra Mazari's company grew remarkably, training actors who rivaled the most renowned professionals. Among the actors and actresses he trained—all university students from Puebla—were Alejandra Mora, Yerye Beirute, Camile Eisering, Alejandro Soto Rojas, José Soto Rojas, Clavel del Carmen Recek Saade, Ivonne Recek Saade, Ángeles Pedraza(my grandmother), and many others too numerous to list. The most successful plays presented at the Odiseo Studio Theater were: Saroyan's *La Hermosa Gente*; Gaslight, by Hamilton, and No Exit, by Sartre. One by one, the University Theater's successes followed: Chekhov's The Bear; Jean Anohui's Antigone; Christopher Fry's A Phoenix Too Often; Samuel Beckett's Happy Days; Tennessee Williams's Auto-da-Fé; and Juan José Arreola's The Hour of Everyone, with which the University Theater won every award: best group, best director, and the two best female performances, at the Festival organized by the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City. It is important to remember that, aside from his work as a theater director and actor, Ignacio Ibarra Mazari was also a remarkable writer whose almost entirely unpublished work deserves to be recovered and disseminated. He published several short stories, three plays: El Busto, Diferentes, and La última Tarde (my own favorite), and a book of prose poetry, El Barandal y los Gatos. After Ignacio Ibarra Mazari passed in 1976, the government of Puebla gave him the Ignacio Zaragoza Medal.” Funny, ain’t it? A medal for a man who never worked for medals only for the stage, the message, the people.