INTAR Founder and Figurehead of Latino Theater Max Ferra Dies at 79

INTAR is sad to announce that Max Ferrá, founder and first Artistic Director of INTAR, died on Saturday, February 4th, in Miami after a two-month battle with pneumonia. Ferra was 79 and retired from INTAR since 2004. He is survived by Winston González, his life partner since the 1980s.

Max Ferrá was born in Camaguey Cuba on July 14th, 1937. He came to New York in 1959. He became an American citizen in 1972. After leaving INTAR he continues to work as a teacher and director in Miami where he had been living.

Ferrá founded INTAR in 1966 to provide opportunities for Spanish speaking actors and directors. Although not conceived as an organization for social change, it quickly came to realize its responsibility as part of the New York Hispanic community. By 1968 INTAR began providing free classes in acting, diction, dance and make-up, culminating with at least one full production by students each year. An effort was made to include different genres: in addition to theater, there was an art gallery, cinema INTAR showcasing Latin American films, and a late night Café INTAR, offering free form entertainment.

In an effort to reach a wider audience, INTAR began concentrating on English language performances in 1975. In 1981 the Hispanic Playwrights in Residence Lab was created to develop new voices mentored by Maria Irene Fornés. The Hispanic Music Theater Lab was created in the same mode to create musical compositions by Hispanic playwrights, lyricists, and composers. By 1985 INTAR was commissioning new works from such writers as Fernando Arrabal, Manuel Puig, Fornés, Tito Puente, and Luis Valdez, among others. These works were performed in English, a tradition that continues at INTAR to this day, offering works to the widest possible audience.

"Like nearly every Latino artist that passed through INTAR since 1966 I am indebted to Max and his vision for Latino voices in the American Theater. In his memory, we continue on with his work," said Mr. Moreno.

"I first met Max when I was 25 years old here in New York. I admired greatly his drive to build a theatre company for Latino voices. I was truly honored to be his choice to succeed him at INTAR when he retired to Miami," said playwright Eduardo Machado.

"Coming of age as a young actor in the 1970s, I was told I could only conceivably be cast in one play, Short Eyes by Miguel Piñero. As a Puerto Rican, I can only play a thug. For my entire upbringing, U.S. popular culture made it clear that I would only be seen as a drug addict or a maid, a gangster or a whore, a Shark or a cockroach - as deadly or over-sexed. By dedicating his life and art to finding and promoting plays by Latino writers in the U.S., Max Ferrá may have done more than any other individual to counter these dire narratives. He taught Latino and Latina writers and directors and actors of several generations that our voices mattered, that our stories were also America's stories, that we contained within our art and ourselves the power to change how the larger culture perceived and understood us. And that, with time and persistence, we could change the culture itself. Max was the first artistic director to teach me that a ticket to the theatre was more than the cost of admission -- it was a passport to another world. And it was a world we Latino artists crafted and controlled, with our own idiosyncratic physics and metaphysics, liberated from the harsh stereotypes and hatreds that haunted us, brimming with exuberant language, arresting characters, and potent theatrical magic and humor. Max gave us a home at a time when the doors were firmly closed at more mainstream theatres. It was our laboratory, our cathedral, and our university. Inside that space, we were free to exercise a uniquely multicultural voice, combining, among other things, mythologies of the Old West with South American magic realism, the sweaty kitchen sink of Tennessee Williams with the fever dreams of Lorca and the passions of the Lower East Side, the social criticism of Ibsen with the muscular and romantic languages of Neruda and Borges and Julia de Burgos. Mentor, father figure, scold, coach, muse, hustler, enabler, friend, critic, and downright pain-in-the-ass. Max was all these things for almost half a century, and he changed the American theatrical landscape forever," said Jose Rivera, Academy Award nominee and two time OBIE Award winner.

INTAR, one of the United States' longest running Latino theatres producing in English, works to: nurture the professional development of Latino theater artists; to produce bold, innovative, artistically significant plays that reflect diverse perspectives; and to make accessible the diversity inherent in America's cultural heritage through an integrated program of workshops, productions of works-in-progress, and mainstage productions.

INTAR brings to the public vital and energetic voices of emerging and accomplished Latino theater professionals, giving expression to the diversity and depth of today's Latino-American community.

Private funeral services were held at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Miami Beach on February 7th, A memorial service will be announced at a later date.