Lito Cruz
Encyclopedia
Life and work
Lito was born Oscar Alberto Cruz in the working-class La PlataLa Plata
La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and of La Plata partido. According to the , the city proper has a population of 574,369 and its metropolitan area has 694,253 inhabitants....
suburb of Berisso
Berisso
Berisso is the "cabecera" of the Department of Berisso of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It forms part of the Greater La Plata urban area and has a population of approximately 14.021 Inhabitants.-People:...
in 1941, and began performing in local theatres at the age of 15. Graduating from a La Plata secondary school, he continued to pursue his calling in La Plata's growing independent theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
scene. Enrolling at the University of Buenos Aires
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...
School of Architecture and Urbanism in 1961, he made time for performances throughout his studies. Following his 1964 graduation, he enrolled at the prestigious University Theatre Institute of Chile
Arts Faculty, Universidad de Chile
In 1849 was created the first Arts School in Chile, as the Painting School was founded inside the University of Chile, under the direction of painter Alejandro Cicarelli, five years later follows the Sculpture and Design School, renaming itself as the Fine Arts School, parallelly in 1849 he Music...
(ITUCH) and returned to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
in 1968. He was cast by Argentine playwright Roberto Cossa
Roberto Cossa
Roberto Cossa is a prominent Argentine playwright and theatre director.-Life and work:Roberto Cossa was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised in the quiet residential borough of Villa del Parque. He first performed in theatre at the age of 17 and, in 1957, he and friends founded the San...
in a short film adaptation of his Los taitas ("The Uncles") and the following year, co-founded the Experimental Theatre Team of Buenos Aires (ETEBA) with Augusto Fernándes. ETEBA produced an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
's Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...
, La leyenda de Pedro, which was well-received and earned Cruz international esteem following its tour through festivals at Nancy, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. ETEBA was invited to perform their El sapo y la serpiente ("The Toad and the Serpent") at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Cruz was Professor of Acting at the National Drama Conservatory between 1972 and 1975, where he directed Peter Handke
Peter Handke
Peter Handke is an avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright.-Early life:Handke and his mother lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin from 1944 to 1948 before resettling in Griffen...
's The Ward Wants to be Warden among other avant-garde works. This experience earned him a U.S. Department of State scholarship to attend Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...
's prestigious Actor's Studio in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and a fellowship with the Gulbenkian Foundation of Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
to attend the University of Porto
University of Porto
The University of Porto is a Portuguese public university located in Porto, and founded 22 March 1911. It is the largest Portuguese university by number of enrolled students and has one of the most noted research outputs in Portugal...
's Drama School. Returning to Buenos Aires, he continued to direct his experimental theatre
Experimental theatre
Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
school, which became one of Argentina's most coveted drama schools. His production of Eduardo Pavlovsky's politically-charged El Señor Galíndez led to the bombing of the Payró Theatre by the fascist commando group, the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance.
Having been given a number of supporting roles in film since his appearance in Los taitas, Cruz was cast as the happy-go-lucky ghost of an assassinated stockyards worker in Fernando Solanas
Fernando Solanas
Fernando Ezequiel 'Pino' Solanas is an Argentine film director, screenwriter and politician....
' Sur
Sur (film)
Sur is an Argentine drama film written and directed by Fernando E. Solanas. The film features Susú Pecoraro, Miguel Ángel Solá, Philippe Léotard, Lito Cruz, Ulises Dumont among others....
(1987), a chronicle of the lives of a working-class southside borough in Buenos Aires during Argentina's brutal last dictatorship
National Reorganization Process
The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...
. He devoted himself to his drama school, however, accepting only brief supporting roles in film until, in 1996, he was cast in Mario Levin's Sotto voce ("Whispers") as Walensky, the gruff owner of a southside bar embroiled in intrigue.
Lito Cruz increased his prominence as an advocate for theatre in Argentina during the 1990s, which had been the victim of intimidation during the 1970s and financial woes, since. He was named director of the Argentine Actors' Ascociation and "Action for Culture, Theatre and Visual Arts," a leading advocacy group for its field in Argentina. This work led to his appointment as National Theatres Director in 1995, a position he leveraged to help have Congress pass the "National Theatre Law" in 1998. The bill helped protect struggling stages against demolition and guaranteed annual subsidies for the art.
Lito Cruz continues his work as head of the drama school that now bears his name, while having accepted more starring roles in film. Some of the most notable have been that of a retired military officer guarding a family secret in Fito Páez
Fito Páez
Rodolfo "Fito" Páez Ávalos is an Argentine popular rock and roll pianist, lyricist, Spanish language singer and film director.-Early career:...
's Vidas privadas (a 2001 drama that helped secure Mexican
Mexican cinema
The history of Mexican cinema goes back to the ending of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, when several enthusiasts of the new medium documented historical events – most particularly the Mexican Revolution – and produced some movies that have only recently been rediscovered...
star Gael García Bernal
Gael García Bernal
Gael García Bernal is a Mexican film actor and director.-Early life:García Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, the son of Patricia Bernal, an actress and former model, and José Ángel García, an actor and director. His stepfather is Sergio Yazbek, whom his mother married when García Bernal was...
's prominence in cinema) and as an aging intellectual facing a crossroads in life in Mario Sábato
Mario Sábato
Mario Sábato is an Argentine film director and screenwriter. He is the son of the famed writer Ernesto Sábato.He worked mainly in the Cinema of Argentina best known for his children's comedy films.-External links:*...
's India Pravile (2003), among others. He continues his work as an advocate for his art in government, as well, as Director of the Province of Buenos Aires Comedy and the Coliseo Podestá Theatre in La Plata.
Cruz created and produced Sueños de milongueros
Milonga
Milonga can refer to an Argentine, Uruguayan, and Southern Brazilian form of music which preceded the tango and the dance form which accompanies it, or to the term for places or events where the tango or Milonga are danced...
in 2009, a musical written in homage to author Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, filmmaker Alejandro Dolina
Alejandro Dolina
Alejandro Ricardo Dolina is an Argentine broadcaster, who also achieved renown as a musician and a writer.-External links:* at AlejandroDolina.com.ar * : listen to La venganza será terrible online...
, and satirist Roberto Fontanarrosa
Roberto Fontanarrosa
Roberto Alfredo Fontanarrosa was an Argentine cartoonist and writer. He created the characters Inodoro Pereyra, a fictional gaucho, and Boogie, el aceitoso, a fictional serial killer.-Early life:...
.