Carmen Pelaez is a Cuban American playwright, actor and filmmaker. Her work is usually inspired by her mercurial and surreal hometown, Miami. She is currently adapting her play, The Cuban Vote, into a screenplay as well as developing bilingual television series, Ventanita. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, NBC Latino, and Marie Claire. Pelaez was awarded the 2020 Drama League Award for her work in 7 Deadly Sins.
While at MacDowell, Pelaez worked on a new full-length play, Caridad, in which the staff of one of the last Cuban cafeterias in Miami is forced to come to terms with each other and the city they built when an employee who is undocumented is targeted by DHS. Caridad will premiere at Miami New Drama. She also worked on a short film based on the play Colada, which received an Ellie Award from Oolite Arts and will be produced in 2024; and completed a ten-minute play commission for the Museum Plays, which will premiere at the Rubell Museum in February of 2024. Finally, she worked on rewrites for her yet to be titled adaptation of Antigone, a commission for the Huntington Theater.
