Cecilia Margarita García-Mella Castillo, known as Cecilia García and nicknamed La Polifacética, is a Dominican singer, actress, television host and producer. She has worked for more than five decades and is the central figure of musical theatre in the Dominican Republic, where she has carried the leading role in most of the large productions staged at the national theatre.

A house full of instruments

She was born in Santo Domingo in 1951 and grew up surrounded by instruments, singing and dancing at school events. She wanted to be a singer from childhood, and at sixteen her family agreed on one condition: that she finish her schooling and go to university. She kept the bargain, graduating from secondary school and studying psychology while her performing career was already under way.

Television

She started on the programme La Taberna de Babín, on the state channel, brought in by the composer Manuel Sánchez Acosta. She belonged to the generation of television performers that included Milton Peláez, Cuquín Victoria, Felipe Polanco and Ángela Carrasco, and she also built a parallel career in advertising, recording jingles and voice characterisations for the country’s largest campaigns.

Between 1970 and 1974 she was part of the comic cast of Telemundo in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She co-produced her first programme, 3x3, in 1974, and in 1978 hosted Cecilia y Solano with Rafael Solano. She produced Esta Noche Cecilia in 1980 and was part of the daily El Show del Mediodía until 1985.

The programme she is most identified with is Cecilia en Facetas, which she produced from 1985 and which ran for a decade, mixing television specials, interviews, musical numbers and drama. She later produced Donde Quiera que Estés, which reunited Dominicans living abroad with their families and ran until 2003.

Musical theatre

Her stage career began in drama, with El Último Instante by Franklin Domínguez at the national theatre in 1974, and moved decisively into the musical with Evita in 1988, which drew the largest audience the house had seen and brought her a first award for production of the year.

In 2005 she starred in the first Spanish-language production of Victor Victoria staged anywhere in the world. She went on to lead El Beso de la Mujer Araña, appeared as Fantine in Les Misérables, and marked fifty years on stage playing Judy Garland in Al Final del Arcoíris. In 2025 she took the title role in the first Dominican production of Hello, Dolly! at the Teatro Nacional.

The singing

Her recorded work is inseparable from the stage. Among the songs she has taken into her repertoire is Hola Nuevo Día, written by Yaqui Núñez del Risco.

Recognition

She was the first woman to win the Gran Dorado, the highest artistic award of its era in the country, and the first to win it three times. In 1975 she took two El Dorado awards in the same year, for comic actress and for producing the best show, the first time a woman had received the latter. Her stage work has since brought her several awards from the Dominican critics’ association, and in 2017 she received the first Soberano awarded for the performing arts.

Cinema

She made her film debut in Biodegradable, directed by Juan Basanta, in 2013.