Gilberto Zaldívar

Who was Gilberto Zaldívar?

Juan Gilberto Zaldívar was the Cuban-born American co-founder of the Repertorio Español a Spanish language theater company based in New York City that presents classic Spanish plays, modern works from Hispanic playwrights and adaptions of works from other languages. Zaldívar spent nearly four decades at the helm of Repertorio Español, which he established in 1968 together with Artistic Director René Buch.

Zaldívar was born in 1934 in the town of Deleyte in Cuba's eastern Holguín Province and attended the University of Havana. In Cuba, he established the Teatro Arlequín, which focused on contemporary works. Zaldívar was hired by the local affiliate of B.F. Goodrich, a position that lasted until 1961 when his personal disagreements with the direction of the government of Fidel Castro led him to emigrate to the United States, where he found an accounting job with Diners Club in New York City and worked his way up to become an executive there.

Building on his experience in Cuba, Zaldívar decided to focus his full time efforts on theater, initially working with mainstream groups like the Greenwich Mews Theater, which sought to include works from minority playwrights. He decided to go off on his own and created Repertorio Español in 1968 together with René Buch, a Cuban emigre who was an art critic who had attended Yale Drama School. With the rise of the Hispanic population in New York City, Zaldívar recognized an opportunity to involve the "hundreds of Spanish actors in New York working in restaurants and offices who are highly desirous of working again in the theater" with the hope of providing acting positions for the many "Spanish, Cuban and Puerto Rican actors who come here to find opportunities to perform". By 1972, Zaldívar had raised the funds needed to be based at the 140-seat Gramercy Arts Theater in Manhattan on East 27th Street.