ABSTRACT
In a 1974 interview with Norma Alarcon-McKesson, the late Nuyorican1 playwright Miguel Piñero discussed his recent status as a critically lauded dramatist-a somewhat unusual position for an ex-convict to embody-and proclaimed that “theater is the only thing that still belongs to the people” (Alarcon-McKesson 56). An extremely talented man with a penchant for trouble, Piñero’s story was quite well known in the 1970s due to the immense success, both popular and critical, of his prison drama Short Eyes. The play went on to win an Obie, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as Best American Play of 1973-74, and six Tony nominations, and it earned Piñero the 1973-74 Elizabeth Hull-Kate Warner award from the Dramatists Guild of New York. Upon completing Short Eyes, Piñero continued his literary work with the founding of the Nuyorican Poets Café,2 in conjunction with poet Miguel Algarín, and the publication of several volumes of poetry along with a number of other plays. However, none of his other publications garnered him as much attention as his debut play, and it remains his best-known work.
