Cuban scenographer and puppet designer. The most prominent designer for puppet theatre active in the country today, Zenén Calero Medina was trained at the Escuela Provincial de Artes Plásticas (School of Fine Arts) in Matanzas, Cuba. Early in his career he allied himself with Teatro Papalote, under the direction of René Fernández Santana. He designed such shows as El gran festín (The Great Feast), La zapatera prodigiosa (The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife), Romance del papalote que quería llegar a la luna (Tale of the Kite that Wanted to Reach the Moon), and Los ibeyis y el diablo (The Ibeyis and the Devil).

Since 1994, he has been central to the work of Teatro de Las Estaciones (Theatre of the Seasons), which he founded with Rubén Darío Salazar, where he is responsible for designing the staging of all the company’s productions.

He has won many major awards for his theatre designs and has given workshops in and outside of Cuba. He has exhibited in Spain, Poland, France, Sweden, Russia, the former Yugoslavia, Mexico, Uruguay and the United States. He is the Managing Director of the Galería El Retablo, which specializes in the preservation of puppetry.

(See Cuba.)