Carlos Felipe
Carlos Felipe was a notable Cuban dramatist born in Cuba on November 4, with the exact year of his birth being uncertain, either 1911 or 1914. Coming from a humble background, he received his education at Escuelas Pias in Havana and graduated as a mercantile specialist at the age of sixteen. Despite facing economic challenges and working various jobs to support his family, including roles as a waiter and factory worker, he embarked on a long career in the Customs Department in Havana, which allowed him the time to write. Felipe became one of Cuba's leading playwrights, with his works receiving recognition, including the National Prize for Theater in the late 1940s.
His plays often blended elements of reality with fantasy, incorporating themes from socialist realism and Afro-Cuban folklore. Felipe's characters were diverse, representing different segments of Cuban society, and his works tackled social issues while challenging traditional norms. Although some of his plays faced censorship due to the political climate in Cuba, he continued to create up until his later years, when he worked as a literary consultant under Fidel Castro's regime. Despite struggling with health issues later in life, Felipe's contributions to Cuban theater remain influential, culminating in his passing on October 14, 1975.
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Subject Terms
Carlos Felipe
Writer
- Born: April 1, 1911
- Died: October 14, 1975
- Place of death: Havana, Cuba
Biography
Carlos Felipe was born in Cuba on November 4, either in 1911 or 1914, the year debatable. Though from a poor background, he was educated at the Escuelas Pias near Havana, and graduated at sixteen as a mercantile specialist. To support his family, he worked as a waiter, messenger, and in a tire factory until 1931, when he began a thirty-one year career in the Customs Department in Havana. Though his formal schooling had ended, he read and studied extensively. His job allowed ample free time, so he was able to write two plays in the first few years, one of which was awarded second prize in a radiocompetition. Little is known about his personal life because he was shy and reclusive, never seeking the limelight, but he did become one of Cuba’s foremost dramatists.
Felipe’s plays won awards in 1947 and 1948; in 1939 and 1949, he was awarded the National Prize for Theater. Because of Cuba’s political climate, many of his works went unpublished and unproduced. Neither dictator Gerardo Machado, deposed in the 1933 revolution, nor the government’s new leader, Fulgeneia Batista, provided adequate funding for the arts.
Early on, Felipe established a pattern in his drama. Foreshadowing and open endings were always an element, as was the combination of reality with fantasy. His characters dealt with the gritty details of life until, in an otherworldly moment, they gained understanding. Sometimes they turned into fabulous creatures, other times they were visited from the grave. In this sense, Felipe intermingled socialist realism with Cuban and African folk tales that relied heavily on the supernatural. Felipe believed the potential for magic was in each new day, if not literally, certainly figuratively. He rejected the idea of theater representing real life, being a mirror image or photograph. Drama, he believed, should never be a reflection, but rather a suggestion to which the spectator could react.
Felipe borrowed ideas from the classics and from the world of music and art, often integrating specific references into his works, but he never lost sight of his homeland, the real Cuba, not the one commonly represented in mid-twentieth century writings. His plays were populated with all the people of the island— the prostitutes, the poor and middle classes, the wealthy, the sailors. His plots often pitted the conventional upper-middle-class, portrayed with cartoon-like traits and values, against those who posed a threat to the establishment— the free thinking individualists who embraced life with all its joys and sorrows.
In the late 1950’s, his play, Ladrillas de plata, was approved for a debut by Batista’s newly formed National Institute of Culture, but a scene in which a woman ran away with a bricklayer was deemed immoral, and the play was never produced. In 1961, under the new regime of Fidel Castro, Felipe was hired as a literary consultant for the National Dramatic Group. At fifty, he was at last able to devote all his energies to the theater. In his last years, Felipe was plagued with ill health and emphysema, but could not stop smoking. He died on October 14, 1975.