Carlos Ancira

Acting · Mexico City, Mexico · Born August 20, 1929

He began his professional studies at the Escuela de Arte Teatral del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), in 1946, under the teachings of Clementina Otero, Enrique Ruelas, Earl Senett and Seki Sano. He excelled as an actor in numerous plays: Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett; Poor People, by Dostoyevsky; The Diary of a Madman, by Gogol; with which he achieved a memorable dramatization and more than two thousand performances for nearly twenty-five years. He received awards and distinctions, among them, that of actor emeritus of the Moscow Academy of Theater and Performing Arts for his performance in The Diary of a Madman. Carlos Ancira Negrete, actor and playwright, was one of the initiators of the "Theater of the Absurd" in the 1960s. His interest focuses on the values of a dehumanized society and the loneliness of the individual, thus reflecting the moral and psychological conflicts of a central character to whom the author gave all the dramatic force through the monologue, one of his most successful resources, which in turn led to a theatrical representation in which the essence of the work itself and the performer could be seen with greater effect, above the theatrical or scenographic space. He left unfinished a book he was preparing on his theatrical technique, and other plays unpublished. Interested in all expressions of dramatic art, he participated in some two thousand television programs, in 50 cinematographic films, in innumerable radio broadcasts and in dubbing and photonovelas. For 30 years he taught at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Academia de Actores and other teaching centers. In the theater he was an author, adaptor, director and fundamentally an actor. His plays include: Nezahualcóyotl (1951), Después... nada (1954), Imágenes (1973), Pasto rojo, El mundo vacío and Cangrejos (not yet premiered). With Gonzalo Martínez, he composed a 120-episode telenovela based on the life and work of Dostoevsky. He adapted for the stage a novel by Dostoevsky, another by Andreiev and several short stories by Chekhov and directed plays by these authors and by Armando Moock, Ugo Betti, Eugene O'Neill and Jesús R. Guerrero. His repertoire as an actor included some 300 plays. Married to actress Karina Duprez, he died in 1987 of a chronic illness.