# Humberto Arenal Pérez

**Date of birth:** January 15, 1926

**Date of death:** January 26, 2012

**Categories:** theater, professor, narrator, playwright, Arts, director, Society

Considered by critics as a notable creator in his broad and diverse work as narrator and playwright, juror, professor and lecturer. This writer holds a prominent place in Cuban culture as a narrator and first-rate theater artist; not only as a mentor of young narrators, but also as a professor and director of actors with national and international careers.

He completed his primary and secondary education in Havana.

In 1948 he traveled to the United States with a scholarship to improve his English learned in Cuba. There he took classes in phonetics, advanced studies of that language, North American literature and later journalism. He studied dramatic arts at New York University, acting with actress Stella Adler, and direction with José Quintero.

He continued film studies at the Film Institute with director Hans Richter. He directed theatrical works in English and Spanish with off-Broadway groups in New York. Among the works directed by him was the premiere of Las armas son de hierro by Cuban writer Pablo Armando Fernández, La soprano calva by Eugene Ionesco, La voz humana by Jean Cocteau.

He was editor of El diario de Nueva York, an important newspaper in Spanish, and of the magazine Visión with worldwide circulation. He was correspondent in the United States for the Spanish magazine Objetivo dedicated to world cinema.

In 1959 he returned to Cuba. He worked at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) as co-screenwriter of the first feature film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Historias de la Revolución), and was in charge of directing and writing four documentaries.

Later he worked in television as artistic director of Escenario Cuatro, and as writer and director of other programs. He was founding professor of dramatic arts at the National School of Art Instructors between 1961 and 1963.

Shortly after he was hired by the National Council of Culture and subsequently by the Ministry of Culture as artistic director, writer and teacher, from 1963 to 1990.

In total he directed more than 50 theatrical works of all genres: drama, comedy, farce, musicals, operas and zarzuelas. Among them stand out Aire Frío, Jesús, and El Filántropo, by Virgilio Piñera; El travieso Jimmy and El chino, by Carlos Felipe; El fantasmón de Aravaca, by Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces; La madre, by Bertolt Brecht; Todos eran mis hijos and Panorama desde el puente, by Arthur Miller; La malquerida, by Jacinto Benavente; the zarzuelas El cafetal by Ernesto Lecuona, and Cecilia Valdés by Gonzalo Roig; as well as works by Sartre, Camus, Ionesco; also musicals such as Irma la dulce, Los novios (The boyfriends), La pérgola de las flores, among others; the operas Los días llenos, by Natalio Galán, and Bastian and Bastiana by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

He directed the comic opera "Gonzalo Roig", where he developed meritorious artistic and teaching work, as well as various theatrical groups, among which stand out the Musical Theater of Havana and the Dramatic Ensemble of Matanzas.

He was professor of dramatic arts at the Higher Institute of Art during the years 1986 to 1989. He has practiced film and theater criticism in various national and foreign publications.

He has been a contributor to the magazines Casa de las Américas, Lunes de Revolución, Unión, Santiago, La Gaceta de Cuba, Cine Cubano, Revista Revolución y Cultura and other national and foreign publications. He was founder of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), as well as its National Council. He belonged to the Association of Writers, and to the Association of Performing Artists of the UNEAC.

He held the positions of vice-president and president of the Association of Performing Artists of the UNEAC. He was a member of the General Society of Authors and Publishers of Spain (SGAE). He was a juror on four occasions of the Casa de las Américas literary awards and in multiple literary contests of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, at the Cuban Institute of the Book (where the Alejo Carpentier Literary Award stands out), in the magazine Revolución y Cultura and of the Grand Theater of Havana Award on three occasions.

He gave literary lectures and theatrical technique lectures in various cities in Mexico, United States, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Spain, Germany, Soviet Union, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Great Britain, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. He was special guest on three occasions at the Cádiz Theater Festival, and at the celebration of the centenary of Bertolt Brecht's birth, organized by the Theater Institute and the University of Barcelona, where he gave three lectures.

In 1997 he traveled to the United States where he gave lectures in Washington and New York. He traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, in April 2005, by invitation of the Andrés Bello Cultural Center to give two lectures: "How I became a writer" and "My participation in cinema."

He died at the age of 86, in Havana.

In October 2006 he presided over the theater jury of the Ricardo Miró Literary Award in Panama City. On September 20, 2006 the Cuban Institute of the Book dedicated the distinction "The author and his work" to him in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of the Second Head. He was nominated on several occasions for the Literary Criticism Award, and for the National Literature Award, which he finally obtained in 2007. His short story and novel work has been translated and published in various languages: English, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian.

In recent years, in the field of cinema he wrote, jointly with filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet, a film screenplay based on the theatrical work Aire frío, by Virgilio Piñera. He created, with the collaboration of Cuban actor Carlos Padrón, a film screenplay titled "Puro teatro", inspired by the life of the famous Cuban singer La Lupe. Upon completing a lengthy novel titled "Occitania", he worked on the revision of the book "El tiempo es un hábil tramposo", which summarizes the experiences lived during his years of residence in New York City.

Works
He has published the titles:
El sol a plomo
Allegro de habaneras
Seis dramaturgos ejemplares
¿Quién mató a Iván Ivánovich?
Caribal
El mejor traductor de Shakespeare
En el centro del blanco
Encuentros
El tiempo ha descendido
El caballero Charles
Lala, Lila, el Benny y muchos
Del agua mansa
Los animales sagrados