Header photo courtesy of Guillermo Cienfuegos
From Alex to Guillermo
The evolution of stage director Guillermo Cienfuegos
By Ella Rodriguez
Deborah Strang, Trisha Miller, and Josey Montana McCoy in Misalliance at A Noise Within (Photo by Craig Schwartz)
This article is part of the Stage Raw/Unusual Suspects Youth Journalism Fellowship
At only 15 years old, Alex Fernandez already knew that he wanted to be immersed in the world of the dramatic arts. He imagined his future as an actor. But that hasn’t been the way it turned out. His life, even his identity, as a director overtook his early focus on acting in movies, TV and on the stage.
He is now an accomplished director, currently having staged George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance, running at Pasadena’s A Noise Within through June 9.
Fernandez was born July 22, 1967 in the Little Havana district of Miami, Florida. His family immigrated from Cuba.
He now goes under the name of Guillermo Cienfuegos. He decided upon this name when he started to direct plays and since then, that pseudonym — a nod to his Cuban heritage — has taken over his professional identity. As he told American Theatre Magazine in 2018, “Guillermo got much better reviews than Alex ever got.” He has been a theater professional for over 30 years, directing plays and movies for 25 of those years.
In his 20’s, Cienfuegos studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. After graduating from there, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his ambition of acting in plays and television. As time passed, he began to start exploring other aspects of theater and found himself immersed in directing.
He seeded his employment as a director by starting a small theater company, Nom de Guerre (War Name), that operated out of the Paul E. Richards Theatre Place, on Rowena Avenue in Silver Lake, to showcase works that he would direct. (Richards was Cienfuegos’s long time acting teacher.) Shortly after, he came to be noticed by more well-known theater companies (Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, The Fountain Theatre in Hollywood, Oregon Cabaret Theatre and the Boise Contemporary Theatre, to name a few).
His more acclaimed stagings include productions of Shakespeare’s Henry V (Pacific Resident Theatre), which won him Ovation and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards, Ionesco’s Rhinoceros (Pacific Resident Theatre), Much Ado About Nothing (A Noise Within), which he set in post-liberation World War II Italy, Middle of The World (Boise Contemporary Theatre and Rogue Machine), The Beautiful People and Heroes of The Fourth Turning (both at Rogue Machine).
Heroes of the Fourth Turning, at Rogue Machine. August, 2023. Evangeline Edwards, Samuel Garnett and Stephen Tyler Howell (Photo by John Perrin Flynn)
Cienfuegos is now in line to take full leadership of Rogue machine, hoping to continue the work that its founding artistic director, John Flynn, has been doing. Flynn had a vision that when he began his company that he wanted to focus on developing and presenting new plays.
“I believe in this company,” Cienfuegos says. “I believe in this company’s mission, and I want to see it through to the end.”
Misalliance at A Noise Within: Deborah Strang, Peter Van Norden, and Josey Montana McCoy (Photo by Craig Schwartz)
“Everything to do with the play is a collaboration,” he says of Shaw’s Misalliance at A Noise Within. It’s a collaboration with the designers and actors” he adds. In Misalliance Cienfuegos made it so that each character has a set trait, and each of these traits is unique.
Despite its age and classical constrains, Misalliance is a scintillating, risible, and amusing play that takes place during the Edwardian era and is set in Hindhead, Surrey. Over the course of one sunny Saturday afternoon, the characters talk about marriage and the ideals and stereotypes of gender roles. They engage in silly banter and gossip over daily topics. We watch their whimsical romances shaping and falling apart with a hint of betrayal. The themes that the play tackles include marriage, differences in class, and gender roles. Though beholden to the restraints of Edwardian England, the tone of Cienfuegos’ staging has the play popping out of the early 20th century, when it was written, into our times. As the saying goes, so old it feels like new.
It would seem to be a gift to local audiences that Cienfuegos’s early career ambitions took a turn, for the better.
“Misalliance” is being performed through June 9 at A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Boulevard, Pasadena; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm, Thurs., 7:30 pm; thru June 9. www.anoisewithin.org.
