Havana, Cuba.-The Cuban actor and theatre director José Antonio Rodríguez, died in this capital at the age of 81 years, disclosed today several press media here.

Rodríguez, an intellectual dedicated to the theater, the cinema and the Cuban television for more than 50 years, was affected in the last years by a degenerative illness that even hindered his capacity to speak.

‘With his death one of the heftiest figures in the Cuban dramatic art and a privileged voice, powerful and warm, that imposed their virtuosity in the radio, and drove with mastery the narration of multiple documentary films and audiovisual materials’, said Cuban website Cubadebate.

His father requested Cuban actor and friend Enrique Santiesteban to evaluate the acting possibilities of then young José Antonio, and after several basic tests the interpretive talent stood out.

He debuted professionally in 1961 inside the Cuban scenic movement with the National Dramatic Group, and then he was part of group La Rueda, up to 1968, a year in that was integrated to the mythical group Los Doce, under the direction of Vicente Revuelta.

Of that initial moment some memorable actings stand out in Romeo and Julieta, by Shakespeare and under the conduction of Czech Otomar Kreycha; The King Christophe, of Aimé Cesaire; and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by Rolando Ferrer and with Verónica Lynn.

‘In 1979 he passed to Teatro Estudio, where he played unforgettable parts that won him wide popularity and prestige, among them the Anselmo of Contigo Pan y Cebolla, by Héctor Quintero; the Macbeth, directed by Bertha Martínez; and Galilean Galilei, in with he shared the protagonistic list’, Cubadebate remembered.

In the 1980’s, at the same time of interventions in serial television, he founded the Group Buscón to exercise potentialities as scene director.