Rolando Lopez Dirube was a Cuban artist who lived in Puerto Rico for most of his life, from 1960 to his death in 1997. Apart from painting, he carved sculptures in wood, small and affectionate, and stone. His graphic work includes excellent wood engravings in wood, lithographs, silkscreens, etchings, and drawings in several techniques.
Metropolitan Dade County (Fla.). Community Relations Board
The Otto G. Richter Library, on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami, completed in 1962, houses collections that serve the arts, architecture, humanities, social sciences, and the sciences. It is a depository for federal and state government publications. Rare books, maps, manuscript and archival collections are housed in Special Collections, the Cuban Heritage Collection and University Archives.
University of Miami -- Societies, etc.
The University of Miami Press published its first book, 'Atlantic Coral Reefs' by F. Walton Smith, in 1948. The Business Services of the university took over the operation in 2002, but new titles have not been published since then. There are 315 University of Miami Press publications listed in Richter's online catalog.
Journalist and commentator Tad Szulc was born in Warsaw, Poland on July 25, 1926 to Janina Baruch and Seweryn Szulc. In 1947, Szulc immigrated to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1954. Based in Spain, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, Szulc has had a long and distinguished career as a New York Times reporter and foreign correspondent.
Having attended the University of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro from 1943 to 1945, his first of many professional assignments was as a reporter for the Associated Press in Rio. In 1948 he married Marianne Carr, with whom he has two children: Nicole and Anthony. From 1949 to 1953, Szulc moved back to the United States where he served as United Nations correspondent for United Press International (UPI). Between 1953 and 1969, Szulc was a New York Times foreign correspondent throughout Europe, America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In 1969 he was assigned to the newspaper's Washington Bureau.
Tad Szulc has written several books of fiction and nonfiction, including Twilight of the Tyrants (1959); The Cuban Invasion (with Karl Ernest Meyer, 1962); The Winds of Revolution (1963); Dominican Diary (1965); Latin America (1966); Bombs of Palomares (1967); The United States and the Caribbean (1971); Czechoslovakia since World War II (1971); Portrait of Spain (1972); Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt (1974); The Energy Crisis (1974); Innocents at Home: America in 1976 (1974); The Invasion of Czechoslovakia, August 1968 (1974); The Illusion of Peace: Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years (1978); Diplomatic Immunity: A Novel (1981); and Fidel: A Critical Portrait (1986).
Szulc has lectured on foreign affairs at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He has conducted seminars for government agencies such as the Peace Corps, and he has participated in broadcast news in radio and television. Szulc has received numerous awards in recognition for his journalistic work, including the Maria Moors Cabot Gold Medal for the Advancement of International Friendship in the Americas from Columbia University (1959); Overseas Press Club citations and award for best magazine interpretation of foreign affairs (1966, 1974 8); Overseas Press Club award for best book on foreign affairs (1979, 1986); the Sigma Delta Distinguished Service Award (1968); the Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honor, France (1983); and the Distinguished Medal from the World Business Council (1987).
Chronology
1926 July 25 Born in Warsaw, Poland
1943 Emigrated to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1943-1945 Attended the University of Brazil
1945-1946 Associated Press reporter, Rio de Janeiro
1947 Emigrated to the United States
1949-1953 UPI, United Nations correspondent
1953 New York Times correspondent
1955-1961 New York Times Latin American correspondent
1961-1965 New York Times Washington Bureau
1965-1968 New York Times correspondent, Spain and Portugal
1968-1969 New York Times correspondent, Eastern Europe
1969-1972 New York Times Washington Bureau
1973 Author and foreign policy commentator and visiting professor, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (Medford, Mass.)
Born in Havana, Cuba in 1920, Martha Frayde Barraqué studied medicine at the University of Havana and at at McGill University in Canada.
Frayde was active in the Cuban Revolution, founding and directing Cuba's National Hospital and its nursing school. She had close ties to Fidel and Raul Castro and Ché Guevara. Frayde served as Cuba's representative to UNESCO until 1965, when she returned to Cuba and became active in the dissident movement. With Ricardo Bofill, she founded the Comité Cubano Pro Derechos Humanos (Cuban Committee for Human Rights) in 1976.
In July of that year, she was arrested as a counterrevolutionary and sentenced to 29 years in prison. She was released almost four years later and has lived in exile in Spain since 1979.
Adria Catalá Casey was a Cuban dancer, known as the "Cuban Shirley Temple." She performed as a dancer in Grupo Folklórico. Grupo Folklórico was established by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Cuba in 1951 with the mandate to represent Cuba in official international events, including festivals. In April of 1954, the group represented Cuba in the National Folk Festival founded by the National Association of the Folkloric Festivals of the United States and the newspaper St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
Laura Zarrabeitia is a Cuban actress (b. 1937) who formed part of Cuba's Teatro Estudio from 1960 to 1970, with which she acted in over 50 plays. Zarrabeitia became a part of Teatro Estudio when it was still an academy just at the beginning of the Revolution, when the people were still enthusiastic about it, although she admits she was hesitant about the future of the dramatic arts in Cuba. Before beginning her acting career, she worked as a secretary for a radio station, and spent a lot of time listening to dialogues and was exposed to acting in that capacity. Her supervisor left the country through Brazil, and Zarrabeitia was left without a job and so she entered Teatro Estudio Academia, directed by Vicente Revuelta and his sister Raquel, which within months became the still famous company Teatro Estudio. In that era, she performed in all of the works put on by the company. She stayed in Cuba for only 11 years after the Revolution of 1959. Her decision to leave was impacted by a change implemented by the Castro government around 1961 where all of the theater companies were dissolved and directors would choose which actors to contract on an individual basis instead of directing groups with a fixed cast of actors that worked together on all their productions. Eventually, she resigned from the theater and worked 23 months of voluntary labor in order to be able to leave Cuba. She left for Spain in 1972 and stayed there for only 1 year. She left mostly because of the cold climate, but during her time there she worked on zarzuelas, and acted in a film. She left on a ship for Venezuela with a zarzuela company and found the climate there much more agreeable. She was in Venezuela for 36 years, a longer period of time than she had lived in Cuba.
In Venezuela, she began to work with a small zarzuela company, then an operetta company with Maria Francisca Caballer, a soprano. While working on the operettas, she met a Cuban gentleman who knew of her from her acting in Cuba and he published an announcement about her. Televisión Canal 8 del Estado hired her to work on improvised programs such as “Sea Usted El Juez.” She became one of the regulars in the cast. She also did a lot of voice-overs. She acted in 10 episode continuous contracts for supporting roles in telenovelas on Radio Caracas Television for 12 years and then after that at Venevisión. She recalls having to memorize as well as improvise a great deal on television. Since she was trained as an actor with the Teatro Estudio, she would take the lines given to her and interpret them, but many of those who she had to work with simply parroted back the lines and this was a downside of the work. This was remedied, however, by also acting onstage with the company El Nuevo Grupo of the famous playwrights Isaac Chocrón and José Ignacio Cabrujas, which she said was like a Venezuelan Teatro Estudio because they would stage their own works. Then the Venezuelan government began to implement similar principles as Cuba had with Consejo Nacional de Cultura de Venezuela. Feeling her freedom restricted, she distanced herself from that.
Around 1987 during the government of Rafael Caldera things began to go downhill. The Radio Vision 11 and Venevision was purchased by a Mexican conglomerate and her contracts ended because she preferred short-term contracts. She began to lose work and left television. She joined another group to do “teatro leido” to make a salary, they would do the readings for free in the libraries. It occurred to her to do sessions of Cuban theater as a theme. Her group read works by playwrights like Virgilio Piñera, Montejo Idobro, Julio Matas, Antón Arrufat, and Ida Granco. These sessions garnered the most audience. Then, Zarrabeitia decided to do her own production of Santa Cecilia de La Habana Vieja by Emilio Estevez and invested all of her money into it, including in renting out a small theater. However, the location of the theater discouraged attendees and the press did not cover the premier. She then did La Soga de Panico about two Cubans who wished to leave the country, but the scenery was stolen. After these distressing experiences, Zarrabeitia left Venezuela in 1998 and joined her brother and many friends in Miami, Florida. At this point she retired from acting due to health issues. She notes that for her, there is nothing more delicious in life than passing a few hours at the theater. She also recalls that the first play she saw was William Inge’s Picnic with actress Antonia Rey, an incredible experience that she would never forget.
Although best known for his set and costume designs, Randy Barceló was also a dancer, photographer, interior designer, and all around artist. Born in Havana on September 19, 1946, Barceló left Cuba through Operation Pedro Pan at the age of 14. He studied art at University of Puerto Rico and in 1965 moved to New York where he enrolled in the Lester Pollard Theatre Forum School of Design.
Barceló began his career as a dancer and choreographer. At the age of 24 he worked as a designer for the Broadway musical, Lenny. In 1972 he designed the costumes for Jesus Christ Superstar and was nominated for a Tony Award, the first Hispanic nominee for costume design. He went on to design costumes for several on and off Broadway plays and musicals, ballet and dance productions, and operas.
Randy Barceló’s art work, primarily abstract and figurative sketches and paintings, have been shown in several galleries and museums including the Cooper Hewitt Museum, Hudson River Museum and Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.
In 1994, Barceló designed costumes for ¡Si Señor! ¡Es Mi Son!, choreographed for Ballet Hispanico by Alberto Alonso and Sonia Calero with music by Gloria Estefan. These were his final designs as he died of cancer on December 6th of that same year.
Randy Barceló’s Production Credits
Broadway
Ain’t Misbehavin’, 1978, 1988
A Broadway Musical, 1978
Dude, 1972
Jesus Christ Superstar, 1971
Lenny, 1971
The Leaf People, 1975 (costumes and make-up)
The Magic Show, 1974
Mayor, 1985 (sets and costumes)
The Night That Made America Famous, 1975
Senator Joe (never officially opened), 1989
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Off-Broadway
Blood Wedding, INTAR Theatre (sets and costumes)
Caligula, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club
Cracks, Theatre De Lys, 1976
Lady Day, Chelsea Theatre Center
Mayor, Village Gate Theatre (sets and costumes)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, New York Shakespeare Festival, Delacorte Theatre, 1982
The Moondreamers, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club
“Phillip Morris Superband Series,” Beacon Theatre (set)
Rice and Beans, INTAR Theatre (sets and costumes)
Spookhouse, Playhouse 91, 1984
The Tempest, LaMama Experimental Theatre Club
Opera
L’Histoire du Soldat, Carnegie Hall (sets and costumes)
Les Troyen, Vienna State Opera
Lily, New York City Opera
Mass, Leonard Bernstein, Kennedy Center
Salome, New York City Opera
Ballet and Dance
Black, Brown & Beige, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, 1976
The Blues Ain’t, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, 1974
Crosswords, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre
La Dea delle Acque, Alvin Ailey for La Scala Opera Ballet, 1988
For “Bird” – With Love, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, 1984
Fuenteovejuna, Ballet Hispanico
Lovers, Jennifer Muller (sets and costumes)
Mondrian, Jennifer Muller (sets and costumes)
The Mooche, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, 1974
Opus McShann, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, 1988
Predicaments for Five, Jennifer Muller (sets and costumes)
¡Si Señor! ¡Es Mi Son!, Ballet Hispanico, 1994
Spell, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, 1981
The Street Dancer, Ballet Hispanico
Television
Ailey Celebrates Ellington, Alvin Ailey for CBS, 1975
Ain’t Misbehavin’, NBC, 1982
Duke Ellington: The Music Lives On, PBS, 1983
Film
Body Passion, 1987 (production designer)
The Cop and the Anthem
Cubanos (art direction and costumes)
Fat Chance (set and costumes for theater sequence)
Fatal Encounter, 1981
Secret Life of Plants (costumes for dance sequence)
Tainted, 1988 (art direction and costumes)
Los Dos Mundos de Angelita, 1984 (art direction and costumes)
Welcome to Miami (art direction and costumes)
When the Mountains Tremble, 1983 (production designer)