Cuban Actor Francisco García, Pancho, Passes Away

December 17, 2021

The great Cuban actor and 2012 National Theater Prize winner passed away in Havana on December 16, 2021.

Born on October 4, 1943, in Cienfuegos, Francisco Wilfredo García Castellanos became an actor in theater, film, and television, where he gained great recognition for the interpretive force he brought to his characters.

Popularly known as Pancho García, the artist who also received the National Youth Prize in 2019, began his career in 1961 when he joined the Experimental Amateur Group of Havana, where he received extensive training for his comprehensive formation as an actor. In 1968 he began directing the amateur group, for which he wrote and directed the social satire work Quiseicosas, among other titles.

He moved into professional theater in 1969 when he joined the cast of the Joven Teatro group, directed by Rubén Vigón. A year later he incorporated himself into the Teatro Estudio group, a company that was founded by Raquel and Vicente Revuelta in 1958. In 1995, Pancho García became part of the Hubert de Blanck Theater Company, where he worked in an extensive repertory until 2003.

Regarding his work in this company and his relationship with director Berta Martínez, Pancho García expressed:

"I was thrilled to see how she directed the actresses. How she gave them resources and ways so they could express and free their talent and, moreover, with the mastery and imagination with which she structured the production. Starting in 1975 she began giving me characters with more responsibility, the first was Don Martín, the male lead in her wonderful production of Don Gil of the Green Breeches by Tirso de Molina.

"In 1979, in the production of Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca, she entrusted me with the bridegroom, a 22-year-old boy overwhelmed by his mother's fear of losing him, and at that time I was 37 years old. In her first production of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, she gave me Macduff, but that production had only one performance. Later, when she made a shorter version of that same production, she gave me Macbeth.

"Subsequently, when she directed The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the only theatrical work written by Alejo Carpentier, she gave me the character of Hernán Cortés. In those productions she gave me a responsibility for which I was perhaps not yet prepared, but she illustrated me, provoked me, challenged me, although I always felt her confidence in me latent."

From 2003 onward, he expanded his collaboration with various theater groups in the country, but he had a permanent presence in Argos Teatro, under the direction of Carlos Celdrán, a period in which his excellent performance in Aire Frío is remembered, an emblematic work by Virgilio Piñera.

On the other hand, Pancho García worked in telenovelas, short stories, and police series for Cuban Television. In an extensive list of films, his appearances are remembered in movies such as Una Pelea Cubana contra los demonios by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea; José Martí: el ojo del canario by Fernando Pérez; Frutas del café by Humberto Padrón; and La piscina by Carlos Rodríguez.

Pancho García participated in more than one hundred stage productions, most of them as the lead. His curriculum vitae includes numerous awards in Cuba and abroad. During his active theatrical career he also received the Raúl Gómez García Order awarded by the National Culture Union, the Majadahonda Distinction and the Nicolás Guillén Diploma, both from the Uneac, and the Distinction for National Culture.

His originality in taking on each character and his relationship with transcendental figures of Cuban theater made him a reference actor for several generations of young Cuban theater artists. His physical passing in this December of 2021 leaves a void in national culture, which can only be filled with the respect and admiration of his contemporaries, and his permanence in the historical memory of our nation.