Manel Dueso

Manel Dueso i Almirall was a Catalan actor, director, playwright, and poet whose career threaded the independent stage, major Catalan theatres, television, and cinema for more than four decades. Colleagues remembered him as an uncompromising "verso libre" of Catalan theatre: lucid, politically incorrect when the work demanded it, and intolerant of comfortable mediocrity. He cofounded Barcelona's influential Sala Beckett, wrote more than twenty plays, directed dense modern classics, taught generations of actors, and remained active as a writer and director into 2025 and 2026.

He was born on 2 August 1953 in Sabadell. According to profiles drawing on a 2015 Diari de Sabadell interview, he first went on stage at about five years old at the Centre Parroquial Sant Vicenç in the Creu Alta neighbourhood. His grandmother, a passionate theatre-goer, nurtured that early love (the same interview's title recalls that she once wanted him to be a bullfighter). When he was about ten, his parents forbade him from doing theatre; he kept training in secret. He worked as a supervisor in a wool textile warehouse in Can Feu, completed military service in Lleida, and at twenty-one committed fully to the profession by entering the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona. There and in workshops he studied with Carlos Gandolfo, José Sanchis Sinisterra, and Pierre Chabert. As a director and dramatist he later described himself as largely self-taught.

As an actor he appeared in more than fifty stage works (Shakespeare, Goldoni, De Filippo, Molière, Bernhard, O'Neill, Büchner, Valle-Inclán, McPherson, Chekhov, and others) under directors including Calixto Bieito, Ariel García Valdés, Lluís Pasqual, Sergi Belbel, Oriol Broggi, Carme Portaceli, and Sanchis Sinisterra. Television made his face familiar to Catalan and Spanish audiences: roles included Mossèn Esteve in La Riera, appearances in El cor de la ciutat, Laberint d'ombres, Nissaga de poder, Nit i dia, Pulsaciones, Isabel, Cuéntame cómo pasó, Vis a vis, Perdida, and Hache. On film he worked for Manuel Huerga (Salvador), Jaume Balagueró (Mientras duermes), Oriol Paulo (El cuerpo, Contratiempo), and others including Eva and Fumata blanca. He also directed actors for film and television with Huerga, filmmaker Maíllo, and others.

As a director he staged more than forty productions, including Conor McPherson's La presa (Critics' Prize 2000 per Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana), Edward Bond, Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Genet's The Maids, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, and works by Bond, Koltès, and others. He directed major performers such as Julieta Serrano, Mercè Sampietro, Emma Vilarasau, Blanca Portillo, Montse Germán, Àurea Márquez, Daniel Brühl, Javier Cámara, Tristán Ulloa, Pablo Derqui, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Gonzalo de Castro, and Marc Martínez.

As a playwright he was a disciple of Sanchis Sinisterra and a cofounder of Sala Beckett. He debuted as a dramatist there in 1991 with Per a no res. Thirteen of his texts premiered at Sala Beckett, La Villarroel, Mercat de les Flors, Sala Muntaner, and elsewhere; some reached Madrid, Cuba, and Colombia. Sara y Simón and Platón ha muerto won the Premi de la Crítica for best text. Late books include the poetic theatre piece Mata'm (Lapislàtzuli, 2023), L'encant de les nenes (Bromera, 2024; Premi Eduard Escalante / Premis Literaris Ciutat de València), and the 2026 poetry collection Som cavalls d'escuma en camps de menta, performed with Francesc Orella, Montse Germán, and pianist Bárbara Granados.

His final major premiere was Jambo Bwana at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (Sala Petita, 17 December 2025 to 11 January 2026), a black comedy about sisterhood and gender violence that he wrote and directed. El País reported that he began the play in 2014, nearly staged it at the Lliure, was blocked by the pandemic, and rewrote it repeatedly. The dedication, "To my friend from Gambia, Samba, who was eaten by a tree," came from an 1980s hospital friendship: Dueso's younger brother was tetraplegic after an accident and shared a Vall d'Hebron room with a Gambian tree-feller who was also left tetraplegic; the friend later returned to Gambia and died for lack of care. Dueso told the press he had travelled often in Africa and wanted the play to affirm that people can live together across racial lines.

He taught acting at Col·legi del Teatre, Eòlia, and Escola de l'Actor (València), and taught interpretation, directing actors, and screenwriting as a visiting teacher at the Institut del Teatre and ESCAC. On 8 September 2026 he died at Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona at age 73. Lapislàtzuli announced a long illness; ARA reported cancer. Tributes from Bitò Produccions, colleagues Francesc Orella and Montse Germán, and Catalan cultural media stressed a theatre of conscience, poetry, and uncompromising craft. This memorial is for the Catalan stage artist and Sala Beckett cofounder Manel Dueso i Almirall (also known as Manuel Dueso) only, not for unrelated people named Dueso.