The Director
Mario Ernesto Sánchez
Mario Ernesto Sánchez is founder and Producing Artistic Director of Teatro Avante and the acclaimed International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami, he received the Distinguished Career Award from the Florida Theatre Conference for his contribution to the development of theatre in South Florida.
An accomplished actor, director, producer and playwright, Mario Ernesto has performed leading roles in many theatre productions and regularly works in film and television. He has represented the United States as a special guest at festivals and cultural events in several countries in Latin America and Europe.
He has served as a panelist on numerous arts boards at the local, state, regional, national, and international levels. Mario Ernesto has acted in more than 40 films with international stars. He also worked in Die Fledermaus, his first collaboration with the Florida Grand Opera.
In 1994, he received the Ollantay award, presented by CELCIT-Spain (Latin American Center for Creation and Research in Theatre, for his achievements in the Hispanic Theatre movement on two continents. In 1995, Mario Ernesto received the prestigious Federico García Lorca Award in Fuente Vaqueros (Granada), Spain, for his enormous contributions to the development of Hispanic Theatre in America.
In 2012, he received the highest award in theatre in South Florida, The George Abbott Award at the Carbonell's "for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts", and in 2014, he received the highest award in Latino theatre in the U.S., the Legacy Award "in recognition of your commitment, leadership and contributions to Latino Theater".
Mario Ernesto is Teatro Avante's representative to the Board of Directors of The Performing Arts Center Trust (PACT). Recently, Mario Ernesto was honored by dedicating the XI International Theatre Festival of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 2023 to him. The production of Al pie del Támesis had the privilege of opening the Festival in Santiago de los Caballeros.
Claudia Tomás
Executive Associate
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Cuban actress, graduated from the National School of Arts and the University of Arts. Since 2011, she has been a part of the "El Público" Theater Company, under the direction of Carlos Díaz, where she has worked on productions such as: "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare, "Peer Gynt" by Ibsen, "The Decameron" by Boccaccio, "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" by Fassbinder, among others.
She has also worked in television and film, in projects like the telenovela "Más allá del límite", the series "Rompiendo el silencio", and in the films "El Mayor" by Rigoberto López and "Inocencia" by Alejandro Gil, for which she received the "Best Ensemble Acting Award at the Latin American Film Festival of Trieste, Italy, 2019" and the "Audience Award (Coral Award/40th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema/2018)."
Recently, she finished filming "Plantadas" by director Lilo Vilaplana and in theater, we have enjoyed her performances in Arca Images productions of "The Bald Soprano" by Ionesco, "A Park in Our House" and "Thirst on Water Street" by Nilo Cruz.
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BEATRIZ J. RIZK, Ph.D.
Dramaturge and Literary Consultant
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Born in Colombia, Dr. Rizk is a college profesor, critic, theater promoter and theater researcher. She has published more than one hundred essays and edited seven special issues of the journalTramoya. Her books include El Nuevo Teatro latinoamericano: Una lectura histórica (1987); Posmodernismo y teatro en América Latina: teorías y prácticas en el umbral del siglo XXI (2001; 2ª. Edición 2007); Teatro y diáspora: testimonios escénicos latinoamericanos(2002) and Imaginando un continente: utopía, democracia y neoliberalismo en el teatro latinoamericano.tomo 1 & 2 (2010). She is co-author of Latin American Popular Theatre: The First Five Hundred Years (1993) and a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. A longtime associate of Teatro Avante, she directs the International Hispanic Theater Festival of Miami’s Educational Program.
MIKE PORCEL
Musical Composer
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The composer, musical arranger, guitarist and singer-songwriter was born in Havana and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. From a young age, he studied classical guitar, composition, harmony and orchestration with distinguished Cuban masters. He debuted as a professional in 1969 with the rock group Dada. His compositions have earned him kudos and have been recorded by major singers, including Elsa Baeza, Nacha Guevara, Argelia Fragoso, Beatriz Marques, Carlos Luis, Bobby Jiménez and Danny Rivera. In 1973 he joined the company Teatro Estudio in the role of conductor and musical adviser, and in those years developed his skills as an arranger. In 1977 he co-founded the group Síntesis, an unprecedented effort to amalgamate the roots of Cuban rural music and different currents of symphonic rock. In 1978 he won first prize at the Festival Mundial de la Juventud y los Estudiantes with the song “En busca de una nueva flor”.
In 1980, along with thousands of other Cubans, he tried to flee the island. For nine years, he was barred from leaving and blacklisted from cultural activities. Finally, in 1989, he succeeded in fleeing to Spain thanks to the intervention of the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. In Spain, he recorded a series of 52 programs for Radio Martí, produced, arranged and directed the CD “Mis momentos felices” for Cuban-Spanish singer Elsa Baeza; composed original music for various projects of Spain’s TVE public network; put together a musical and dramatic special based on the poetry of Spanish mystics John of the Cross and Theresa of Jesus; and performed a second version of Que hablen los poetas throughout Spain and Belgium. He composed music for an animated series (Mimi and Mr. Bobo) and for several documentaries in Switzerland and Spain. Since 1995, he has worked with Teatro Avante composing original music for a range of plays, including Matecumbe, La peregrina,Cenizas sobre el mar, Aire frío, Por las tierras de Colón, El malentendido, El no, Al pie del Támesis, Alguna cosita que alivie el sufrir y El puerto de los cristales rotos.
JORGE NOA & PEDRO BALMASEDA
Set and costume designers
The tandem composed of Jorge Noa and Pedro Balmaseda includes artistic, architectural and interior design in their work. They are known and respected within the Miami scenic scene for their theatrical designs, as well as for their important work in rescuing the most beautiful traditions of Cuban art. Jorge was born in Camagüey, graduated in Architecture from the Higher Polytechnic Institute of Santiago de Cuba and Pedro in Havana, graduated in Dentistry from the University of Havana. In Cuba they receive two Mahogany Mask awards for their scenographic works collaborating with many companies on the island.
They moved to Venezuela and concentrated on designing sets for television, including national channels like Televen and Venevisión. They have lived in Miami since 1998 and run the firm Genoah Interior Design, Inc., which has created comercial and residential environments throughout South Florida. They also head the artistic production company Nobarte, which designs and manufactures sets and costumes for a range of companies. The team does major work for Miami Dade College’s Teatro Prometeo, for which it has designed more than ten productions in recent years. Their creations have been used by many other theatrical companies, such as Teatro Doble, Galiano 108, El Ingenio Teatro and Wolfson Opera/Musical Ensemble, among others. Since 2006 Teatro Avante’s productions have been graced with their accurate and beautiful set and costume designs. Those productions include Una tempestad, Yerma, La Celestina, Aire frío, Por las tierras de Colón, El malentendido, El no, Al pie del Támesis, Años difíciles and Alguna cosita que alivie el sufrir. They have participated in a range of theater festivals and their creations have enhanced stages in Brazil, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Spain, United States, Puerto Rico, Peru and Mexico. As part of the 28th International Hispanc Theatre Festival, the team presented a retrospective of their designs titled Journey to the Center of the Stage.
ERNESTO PADILLA
Lighting Design
Padilla, as he prefers to be called, was an art curator and restorer in Cuba and subsequently, for more than ten years, in Buenos Aires. Since 2000, he has been working with Teatro Avante and the International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami, first as a technician, then technical director, and in recent years in charge of lighing design for all Teatro Avante productions, including Por las tierras de Colón, Aire frío,El malentendido, El no, Al pie del Támesis, Años difíciles and Alguna cosita que alivie el sufrir. Padilla currently heads his own company, Ernesto Padilla Productions, which offers lighting, sound, video and staging services of all kinds for public and private events.
