Carlos Cruz's Second Act

Fidel Castro took power January 1, 1959, when Cruz was just a boy, and during the first two years of the revolution, U.S. heroes continued to dominate Cuban movie houses. But then came the break in relations in January 1961 and the trade embargo, and no new American films were shown in Cuba until 1970, when the island began pirating them.

The Cruz family suffered shortages like everyone else, and Cruz's father found it harder than ever to conduct his businesses transporting vegetables to market and selling used cars. Still the family chose to remain in Cuba. "My parents were never bitter opponents of the revolution, like some people," Cruz offers.

And for a young man with aspirations of acting, the revolution was a godsend. The Castro government established state drama schools of much better quality than previously had existed. In high school young Carlos developed an ability to impersonate his teachers and a talent for dramatic readings, from Shakespeare's plays to the writings of Jose Martí. In 1968, at age eighteen, he passed a competitive exam to enter the Escuela de Artes in Havana, at what previously had been the Old Havana Country Club, a bastion of the prerevolutionary privileged class. Cruz notes only nine students were accepted out of more than fifty who applied. That year he began a rigorous four-year theater program.

"My first year our final project was Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw," he remembers. "The next year we did Andorra by [Swiss writer] Max Frisch. The following year I played Oedipus in Oedipus Rex, and the last year we did Molire. It was a very good education in world theater." Among his teachers were visiting professionals from the Moscow Art Theater, one of the greatest drama companies in the world.

But it was during this time that Cruz began constructing the great drama of his own life, or, at least, his central question of conscience: his differences with the revolution, which gave him great training but which was tainted by intolerance. He was still a student in 1971, when the first Party Congress on Education and Culture officially marginalized certain performers because of their faith and sexual orientation. The official line on homosexuals was that they shouldn't be allowed to influence the nation's children in any way, and the Catholic Church was seen as an enemy of the revolution.

"A good friend of mine in the theater program, Jorge Aguabella, was Catholic," says Cruz, "and the state security began to harass him about it. He was a person who was surely against all the reactionary forces in the church and the society, but that didn't matter to them. Because he was Catholic, they hounded him. When it came time later for him to go to Instituto Superior de Artes to get his degree, they wouldn't let him, and he eventually left the profession. He lives in Costa Rica now."

Cruz's own studies went well, however, and he kept his feelings to himself. After graduating from the Escuela de Artes, he was accepted into the prestigious repertory company at Havana's Teatro Rita Montaner, named after the legendary Cuban singer. The company performed in a basement theater in an office building in the Vedado neighborhood and included some 35 actors, plus directors, playwrights, and technicians. Cruz earned a yearly salary, not large, but typical of a Cuban government worker. It was a dream come true.

As the young actor gained more experience, he won bigger roles, and the good reviews rolled in. He eventually played the title role in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya; the narrator, Tom Wingfield, in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie; and the protagonist in Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.

Trim and swarthy, with deep-set brown eyes and black hair, Cruz easily could have played romantic leads. "But I've never done that," he says. "I've always been a character actor, which is what I always wanted to be. Sometimes those roles have been lead roles but they have still been character parts in my mind."

The repertory group took its productions all over the island, and by 1984, a decade or so after he'd joined, Cruz won an award as the best young theater actor in Cuba. In twenty years he appeared in some 60 plays at the Rita Montaner.

Cuban theater, like other artistic disciplines, was steadily improving in the Seventies, when Cruz began his career. Pablo Milanes, Silvio Rodriguez, and Los Van Van were making their musical reputations. Cuban pop-art king Raul Martinez -- who did for Che Guevara and Jose Martí what Andy Warhol did for Marilyn Monroe -- also was coming into prominence.

"Let's face it, my life was wonderful," recalls Cruz, who was part of that scene. "I was one of the few people in the world doing exactly what he wanted to do. I was appearing in one play six nights per week, and I was usually in rehearsals for two or maybe even three more. I was in my twenties, and I had girlfriends and friends and parties."

Cruz would eventually marry twice, though he has no children. His first wife was a theater makeup artist, who has remained in Cuba; the second worked as an assistant to film directors and now lives in France. Both marriages ended in divorce, and he says he doesn't keep in touch with the women.