Primo Rojas

Primo Eliseo Rojas Pena, born in Bogota on 5 August 1959, is a Colombian actor and comedian recognized above all for his eccentric theatrical monologues, including Las botas del tio Manuel (2001) and El Timido y el amor (1996).

Raised in the Kennedy neighbourhood of Bogota, Rojas trained for three years at the city's District Theatre School. A turning point in his career came through his discovery of the work of the Italian playwright Dario Fo, later awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature, who visited Colombia in 1984 and performed several of his pieces at the Teatro Colon in Bogota. Seeing Fo perform, drawing on medieval popular theatrical traditions far removed from classical convention, left a deep impression on Rojas and reshaped his understanding of what theatre could be.

From that point on, Rojas devoted his work to popular humour, an area of Colombian theatre that, in his case, grew into a fully developed comic style of its own. His output is often characterised as black humour.