Always with a smile from ear to ear and a gentlemanly treatment for everyone, we have seen Miguel Alcántara develop as an artist, actor, screenwriter, television producer and as a “stand-up comedy” into one of his newest virtues.
His story begins in El Maizal, a field in the province of Valverde on the northwest line, where he lived his first years in a wooden house surrounded by a huge terrace planted with fruits, mainly mangoes.
When he came to the interview with Listín Diario, he felt a characteristic smell that newspapers usually have, which took away his nostalgia and took him back to the age of 16, when he was already an assistant to a photographer and, thanks to his first job, was earning 5,000 Pesos with those who were able to buy their first motorcycle in 1991.
“I was a very intelligent farmer. My parents divorced when I was ten years old, and when I was twelve, my father took me to the neighborhood of Vietnam, to Los Mina, Santo Domingo Oeste, to an aunt’s house,” he says.
Miguel became the eldest of nine siblings because his parents had three children when they divorced and three more children were born when they married other couples.
“Most of my siblings live in the United States. I get along very well with everyone. The part of having many siblings was an odyssey for me, but I survived. Now they are all very proud of me.”
When Miguel arrived in the capital, he suffered a “culture shock” because, having grown up in the countryside, where houses were far from each other and courtyards were huge, he moved into a modest house where people practically lived and lived together .
“It was impressive for me to see so many houses stuck together, the customs scared me, I had no idea how people could live like that, but I gradually got used to it and today I am grateful to have lived in a neighborhood “Because from then on I got “a lot of material for my characters and the scripts that I had to write later,” he says thanks.
THE ACTING
With the arrival of theater groups such as Manuel Chapuseaux’s Califé and Gayumba, Miguel learns acting for the first time. These theater groups had the task of creating theater groups in the neighborhoods, an altruistic work with the aim of giving young people the opportunity to learn about art and develop their potential.
At the age of 16, Miguel belonged to one of these cultural cells called the Arcoíris theater group.
“Being part of these groups, sharing with friends, making connections, that helped me enormously and I fell in love with theatre. “I studied theater at the Casa de Teatro thanks to a scholarship that Manuel Chapueseaux gave me and won another scholarship with the Peruvian René Pérez to take part in some film production workshops and that’s when I fell in love with cinema,” says he who is unable to do so holds back his laughter.
He was not yet 18 years old and was already enrolled at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, UASD; Study of advertising art.
The university administration made some changes to the course that did not convince the young man, so he decided to study film, which he completed.
“I did street theater for many years, especially in community activities. Theater was my great school because they gave me lots of texts to read and I fell in love with reading. I loved the works of Franklin Domínguez, which encouraged me to write. “A book that changed my life was by Roberto Marcallé Abreu called Saturday after the Rain. I read it several times, this book had a big influence on me,” he admits.
Miguel Alcántara comes from the province of Valverde.
TO THE TV
His friend, the filmmaker Bladimir Abud, with whom he studied at university, was Nuria Piera’s assistant. Abud recommends that he work as an assistant to Nuria Piera, with whom he only worked for three months.
He remembers that his rejection came because, after a day of intensive shooting in San Francisco de Macorís, during which he recorded those affected by school breakfast poisoning, Nuria arrived at the office at 10:00 that evening and asked him to do the 15 Cassettes to decrypt 30 minutes.
“Deciphering these videos describes what happens every minute as Nuria writes the script. I told him I would go home, come back at 5:00 a.m. and he would have the work on his desk by 9:00 a.m. She said to me, “It’s okay, then go and rest.”
What Miguel couldn’t have imagined was that when he arrived the next day he would find the termination letter that Nuria had left with the security guard.
“I came home hard again, but it was a great experience and when I see it we always enjoy talking about it,” he says.
WITH ALFONSO RODRÍGUEZ
“Then something fantastic happened,” he says: he was recommended to Alfonso Rodríguez when Alfonso set about restructuring Telecentro.
“A friend recommended me and told him that I write very well because I wrote monologues and rehearsed them before the teacher came,” he explains.
When Miguel came to the appointment with Alfonso, he learned that renowned theater artists had gone through the casting, and when he arrived, he heard one of them say that he needed at least two months to write a chapter of a script, and Alfonso was it I demand it. In three days.
“Alfonso put me to the test and explained to me that he needed a script for the first episode of a series like El Chavo del Ocho. I told him I would deliver it the next day at 9:00 am and left with the order.
Alfonso did not dare read the script given to him by the young man with no experience in television. It is Laura Guzmán who is assigned to read Miguel’s work entitled “The Strike, the Factory and the Blackout.”
Two and a half hours passed when Alfonso asked him for his ID to find him and asked him to find another writer as good as him, then he recommended Humberto Espinal.
So he started working as a writer for the new television series “Los Electrolocos” and “Ciudad Nueva”. Initially the shows were not billed because the audience was unfamiliar with this type of production. “But after two months, people were already telling us the entire chapters.”
“Bemberé,” a nighttime program, was another space for which he wrote and also performed. “I was fine because they paid me as a writer on three shows and also as an actor.”
Telecentro also includes humor for “Funny with Jochy” alongside Oscar Pérez, William Díaz and Juan Manuel Tejada. Alfonso leaves Telecentro and José Enrique Pintor joins as program director.
Antena Latina also has a relaunch of the program and it is directed by Alfonso Rodríguez, who once again calls on Miguel to write in the new series “Pobre Presidente” and “Rincón Paraíso”, in the latter he also starred.
“Before the bankruptcy of Baninter Bank, an institution that supported the economic part of this channel, I was fired from Telecentro and remained working at Antena Latina.”
Miguel’s journey through television continued when Color Visión wrote for “Gózalo” by Carlos Alfredo, then he moved on to “Happy Team” with Charlie San Miguel and Vivián Fatule.
“I had some advertisements and went to Telecentro to do the comedy show La Carambola,” he remembers.
He also appeared in the entertainment program “La Tuerca” for a few months until he joined Telemicro as producer of “La Opción de las 12”. He is currently the moderator of the room.
In the cinema he produced his first film “The Worst Comedian in the World”, before that his name appeared as a screenwriter in the films Santicló, “Sanky Panky 2” and “There is no more cure”.
He also wrote the libretto for the El Soberano Prize productions in 2020 and 2021.
The objectives proposed by Miguel Alcántara have not yet been achieved. At this point he hopes to devote more time to acting, especially stand-up humor, a work in which he has also excelled as a writer, but for others as a comedian. Now he does it to bring it to the stage.
“I gave up productions because it’s very difficult, sometimes the person in front of the camera doesn’t have the talent for what you want to put on the screen, in the cinema or in the shows and that’s quite annoying.” and that ” It’s pretty annoying.”