Carlos Michelena
Carlos Alberto Michelena Soria, known as "El Miche", is an Ecuadorian actor, comedian, cartoonist and humorist, considered one of the most representative figures of street theatre in Ecuador. His long career combines political satire, social humour and criticism of inequality. He was born in Quito on 5 January 1954 into a family of limited means: his father was a shoemaker and his mother sold sweets and newspapers on the street, and as a child he helped the family by selling sweets himself. He went to primary school at the Colegio Simón Bolívar but did not finish secondary school. He became interested in theatre at ten, miming to records at a neighbourhood club in El Dorado, Quito. At fifteen, encouraged by his mother, he began attending the drama school of the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana as an observer, and then worked as a props assistant for the Teatro Ensayo company, where he got his first role, in Huasipungo, based on Jorge Icaza's novel. He started his acting career at the Casa de la Cultura's theatre school at eighteen, trained under the director Antonio Ordóñez, and acted with Teatro Ensayo in plays such as Boletín y elegía de las mitas, Dos viejos pánicos and El médico a palos. He later joined the Ollantay company of the National Polytechnic School and the group Malayerba, and directed Teatro de la Calle, which took plays to squares and parks. Since the 1980s his stage has been El Ejido park in Quito, where, with his face painted white and in costumes he makes himself, he plays characters drawn from everyday life, from neighbours, workers and street sellers to politicians and the powerful, using irony to make audiences think. The press has described El Miche as a cross between a political jester and a popular chronicler. He has also worked in television, radio and online. In 2011 he opened a circus show, El circo del Miche, which ran for three weeks at the Carpa Teatro, and in 2019 he presented El toque del Miche at the Teatro Centro de Arte in Guayaquil. He prefers open spaces, which let him improvise on what happens around him, and avoids double-entendre humour. In 2003 the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana awarded him its Order of Artistic Merit.
