Albio Miguel Paz Hernánez

ALBIO MIGUEL PAZ HERNÁNDEZ
-PLAYWRIGHT AND THEATER DIRECTOR-

Born in Zulueta, Villa Clara, he was one of the most important playwrights and directors of the Cuban theater scene.

In 1959 he began his theatrical career with artistic brigades in the municipality of Guanabacoa, under the direction of Julio Martínez Aparicio and the following year, before enrolling in acting at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Havana, he participated in several projects sponsored by the Provincial Council of Culture. In 1964 he became part of the Francisco Cobarrubias Brigade and in 1966 he joined the National Dramatic Ensemble.

He was a member in 1968 of the first representation of the National Dramatic Ensemble abroad and is a founder of the legendary Teatro Escambray group in which he remained until 1975, initiating a series of contributions to national dramaturgy based on constant searches and discoveries that led him to abandon acting and dedicate himself to playwriting and directing.

Author of La Vitrina, the first work with which in 1971 Teatro Escambray returns the image of the peasant it had received and begins to rehearse dramatic formulas and solutions with a transcendence for national theater that makes it a milestone in the history of the collective, helping to transform through art the social and psychological structures of the Cuban peasant, for which he obtains the award for best Cuban text at the National Theater Panorama, 1975.

During this period he writes other works that mark and characterize an aesthetic such as El Rentista, El Paraíso recobrado (Award for best text in the National Theater Panorama, 1976) that trigger the author's service work, as well as participating in social research projects, such as that of the School of Letters at the University of Havana, directed by Dr. Graciela Pogolotti, in some unfinished ones such as the Sierra del Rosario, and in events as important as the Spring Festival in Moscow, as a special guest and the Theater of Nations Festival, Caracas.

During a brief period he was a member of Teatro Estudio. In 1977 he founded the Cubana de Acero group in the steel mill of that name, a vital center of the country's economy, in which aided by his experience with Escambray he begins an investigation of that proletarian sector for whom he writes works that initiate the treatment of new themes in national dramaturgy, that of the working sector in the construction of socialism, such as Autolimitación, with which he presented successfully at the I Festival of New Theater, and Huelga, the latter Casa de las Américas Prize, 1981, with which he traveled with the group to the Latino Festival in New York, a work of undoubted testimonial and artistic value of the period 1936 to 1938 in the American Steel Company. His work of sociocultural research in the metal working sector was highly valued by the ministries of Culture and the heavy industry sector.

In 1985 at the request of the Government, the Party and the Direction of Culture in the province of Matanzas he arrives in this city to direct El Mirón Cubano, work that he begins with an intense and profound investigation in the sugar sector together with the members of the collective that results in the work El Gato de Chinchila y la locura a caballo which has wide national repercussion both from critics and the public who debate in work centers the artistic and social proposal. With this work they participated in the International Festival of Berlin.

From this date on, he leads the collective with an intense work of more than twenty productions of works written or adapted by him, among which stand out; Fragata (Cobarrubias Prize of UNEAC), Las penas que a mí me matan (Prize of the Monologue Festival of Havana), El Gato y la Golondrina (Prize for Staging of the Festival of Camagüey and that of children and youth, Guanabacoa), La extraña y anacrónica aventura de Don Quijote y otros sucesos dignos de saberse y representarse (Villanueva Prize, 1994).

It is worth highlighting in his artistic trajectory his attachment to a popular theater that in El Mirón Cubano from 1989 is characterized by systematic work in the experimentation and investigation of a language of effective communication with the public and the search for new spaces, gradual approach to an aesthetic of street theater, denoting in the productions and dramaturgy an innovative style within this modality in Cuba, of which they can be considered initiators and in which in the personality of Albio Paz constitutes among others one of his most important contributions to Matanzas and national theater, which has allowed his works to be seen in the most remote places and systematically in Cuban schools, factories, parks but also in prestigious festivals in Cuba and abroad such as those in the East, in Venezuela, Baracaldo, Molina de Segura, La Ruta del Quijote, Aguinés, Spain, Ibero-American Festival of Bogotá, Colombia, Wentestache, Germany, as well as systematic participation during the nineties in the Fiestas de María Pita, La Coruña, Spain.

The works of Albio Paz from 1971, which begins his work as director and playwright have been seen in Venezuela, United States, Germany, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, published in Cuba, Czechoslovakia and Germany, among others.
Critical works on his productions and dramaturgy appear in important specialized magazines in Cuba and abroad.

He was a member of UNEAC and president and vice-president of the Theater Branch of Havana, as well as president of the Provincial Council of the Performing Arts in Matanzas.

He taught acting workshops in Cuba and abroad.

He was awarded the Medals:

»Alejo Carpentier
»Raúl Gómez García
»Antero Regalado
»Distinction for National Culture
»Sauto Theater Distinction