Teatro Avante :: The Director | Mario Ernesto Sánchez

 

MARIO ERNESTO SÁNCHEZ  is the founder and producing artistic director of Teatro Avante and the International Hispanic Theatre Festival (IHTF) of Miami. He is also co-author and director of El puerto de los cristales rotos (Harbor of Broken Glass). He received the Florida Theatre Conference’s Distinguished Career Award for his contribution to the development of theater. An actor, director, producer and playwright, he has played leading roles in many domestic and foreign plays and acted in films and television series. Complementing his local work, his productions have represented the United States at venues in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and he has been an honored guest at festivals and other events around the world. He has been a member of artistic advisory boards at the local, regional, national and international levels, performed in more than 40 films and television series – as well as in a Florida Grand Opera production of Die Fledermaus – and worked with world-renowned actors. In 1994 he received the Ollantay award to a promoter of Ibero-American theater presented by the Centro Latinoamericano de Creación and Investigación Teatral (CELCIT, Latin American Center for Theatrical Creation and Experimentation) in Madrid. In 1995 he received the Federico García Lorca award in Fuente Vaqueros, Spain, for his contribution to the development of Hispanic theater in the Americas, and in 2004 the Kusillo award from FITAZ (International Theater Festival of La Paz) in Bolivia, for the same reason. In 2007 the Arts & Business Council of Miami presented him with a Special Recogntion Award for his artistic achievements through the IHTF, which he founded in 1986 and has headed ever since. In October 2009 he received the FIT de Cádiz- Atahualpa del Cioppo award at Cádiz’s Ibero-American Theater Festival (FIT), and in April 2012 the award for cultural diversity from the Universidad Cientifica del Sur (UCSUR) at the VII International Theatre Festival in Lima, Peru and The George Abbott Award for excellence in the Arts. In 2014 the Legacy Award in Chicago for his contribution to the arts. Mario Ernesto is a member of the board of directors of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts Trust (PACT).