Machado, Eduardo, 1953-

Cuban-born playwright Eduardo Machado is the author of over 27 plays and has served as Artistic Director of INTAR Theatre in New York since 2004. Machado is also the former head of Columbia University's Graduate Playwriting Department. Born in Havana in 1953, Eduardo Machado arrived in the United States with his brother Jesús in 1961 as part of Operation Pedro Pan, an effort that brought 14,000 unaccompanied children out of Cuba. Machado and his brother lived with relatives in Hialeah, Florida until they were reunited with their parents and the family moved to California. Machado began acting in Los Angeles at age 17, and a year later married Harriet Bradlin. The marriage ended over a decade later, and today Machado is openly gay. He moved to New York in the early 1980s and began writing plays full time. Machado's works most often explore themes of Cuba, exile, cultural identity, and homosexuality. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Theatre Communications Group, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.