Gilberto Zaldívar

Gilberto Zaldívar (born 1934 in Deleyte , Holguín Province , Cuba ; † October 6, 2009 in Manhattan ) was a Cuban theater director .

Life

After attending school, he studied at the University of Havana and then worked as a sales manager at the Cuban branch of the BF Goodrich Company . He was already fascinated by the theater in Cuba and was co-founder of the "Teatro Arlequín", which performed contemporary plays, and for which he was most recently active full-time. In 1961, two years after the end of the Cuban Revolution and the accession of Fidel Castro to power on January 1, 1959, he emigrated to the USA because of his dissatisfaction with the increasingly totalitarian orientation of the Castro government .

In New York City he first found a job in an accounting firm and shortly afterwards as a manager at Diners Club . Soon he returned to his passion for the theater, working with English-speaking theater organizations such as the Greenwich Mews Theater, which were interested in plays by minorities and foreign language playwrights .

In 1968 he finally founded the "Repertorio Español" in New York City together with René Buch , a Cuban who began studying at the Yale Drama School in 1949 and who most recently worked as a theater critic and editor in the hope of a growing enthusiasm for Spanish-language theater plays. As early as 1972, the theater was able to move into the 140-seat Gramercy Arts Theater. Under Zaldívar's direction, the Repertorio Español produced classics by Federico García Lorca , Pedro Calderón de la Barca and Miguel de Unamuno as well as adaptations of stories by Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as English-language pieces such as " Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" "by Edward Albee .

In 1980 the musical " The Fantasticks " by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones was performed in Spanish, which was then performed on a tour in Central and South America and the Caribbean with the support of the United States Information Agency . In the mid- 1980s , Zaldívar also commissioned dramas for premieres, and most recently he also organized an annual competition for Spanish-speaking playwrights such as Angelo Parra . In 1998 the Repertorio went on tour for the first time in his old homeland Cuba.

For his services to Spanish-language theater, he has received the Obie Award , the Drama Desk Award and other prizes such as the New York State Governors Award.

After he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in 2005 , he resigned as theater director and became president of the Repertorio Español.

In the more than 40 years since it was founded, the theater had produced more than 250 plays, from classics from the 17th century to world premieres by American-born Spanish-speaking playwrights. It also offered actors and directors such as Raúl Juliá , Jorge Pupo and Míriam Colón performance opportunities .

Web links

• THE NEW YORK TIMES: "Gilberto Zaldívar, a Theater Founder, Dies at 75"