Sandra
Delgado

Sandra Delgado is a first-generation Colombian American whose work as a writer, actor, and champion of the Latinx community on- and off-stage have earned her the accolade “her own brand of triple threat” (New City). Delgado fuses interviews and historical research with movement, music, and myth in her work. She is best known for her play La Havana Madrid, which enjoyed sold-out runs at Steppenwolf and the Goodman Theatre and as a coproduction by Teatro Vista and Collaboraction. Featured in The New York Times and CNN, it was hailed as “heartfelt and fascinating” (Chicago Tribune) and praised for possessing “the kind of magic that only theater is capable of” (New City).

Her acting highlights include La Ruta and The Motherf**ker with the Hat (Steppenwolf), Oedipus El Rey (Public Theater), the five-hour epic 2666 (Goodman Theatre), Mojada (Victory Gardens Theater), and the titular role in La Havana Madrid. Awards include an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, the 3Arts Award, the Joyce Award, the TCG Resident Actor Fellowship, and the 2017 Latina Professional of the Year Award from the Chicago Latino Network. She is one of the women honored in Kerry James Marshall’s largest public mural, Rushmore, at the Chicago Cultural Center.

She is a founding member of the social justice theater company Collaboraction, an ensemble member of Teatro Vista, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, and a member of the City of Chicago’s Cultural Advisory Council. As Loyola University Chicago’s artist in residence for 2019–20, Delgado began to develop her new musical, The Boys and the Nuns, which centers on the fight for LGBTQ rights in 1980s Chicago.

Portrait photo by Joe Mazza.