Salvador Novo, who was mounting a play at Teatro Juárez, in the city of Guanajuato. This meeting caused such an impression on Ibargüengoitia that he decided to return to Mexico City and enrol at the Faculty of Philosophy at UNAM, where he graduated with a specialization in Dramatic Arts. One of his teachers was Rodolfo Usigli. After he finished his studies, Ibargüengoitia started teaching. He even got his teacher Rodolfo Usigli's position, together with Luisa Josefina Hernández, when Usigli retired. He started to apply for and win scholarships too, including a Rockefeller scholarship for a stay in New York in 1955, to continue with his literary career. Ibargüengoitia moved to a house in Coyoacán (by then an unkept and hard to reach district of Mexico City) in 1957 together with his mother and aunt. He met the artist Joy Laville in 1963 or 1964 in a bookstore in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and got married in 1973 after a few years together. They lived in Coyoacán until the death of Ibargüengoitia's mother, after which they decided to travel around Europe. They settled permanently in Paris in 1980. Literary career Theatre While he was still a student of Dramatic Arts, in 1953, Ibargüengoitia wrote several plays to moderate acclaim, but which seemed to promise a successful career in theatre, such as Susana y los jóvenes, La lucha con el ángel, Clotilde en su casa, the children's comedy El peluquero del rey, Llegó Margó and Ante varias esfinges. After graduation he continued writing plays, although they had much less success; in 1959 he wrote the comedies El viaje superficial and Pájaro en mano; in 1960 he wrote La conspiración vendida per Salvador Novo's request (even though it never premiered, Ibargüengoitia sent it to a literary contest under a pseudonym and won Mexico City's Prize), Los buenos manejos, La fuga de Nicanor, La farsa del valiente Nicolás and Rigoberto entre las ranas, and from 1961 is El amor de Sarita y el profesor Rocafuerte. His already debilitated link to the theatre due to the lack of success with his plays got further damaged in the beginning of the 1960's when Roberto Usigli was asked in an interview by Elena Poniatowska to name his favourite students and he did not mention Ibargüengoitia. He took the snub to heart, as he was sure he had been one of the most distinguished students of Usigli's