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José Rivera (playwright)
Encyclopedia
José Rivera is a playwright
and the first Puerto Rican
screenwriter
to be nominated for an Oscar
.
section of San Juan, Puerto Rico
in 1955. He was raised in Arecibo
where he lived until 1959. Rivera's family migrated from Puerto Rico
when he was 4 years old, and moved to New York
. They settled down in Long Island
, whose small town environment would be of an influence to him in the future. His parents were very religious and he grew up in a household whose only book was the Bible
. His family enjoyed telling stories and he learned a lot by hearing these stories. As a child, he also enjoyed watching The Twilight Zone
and The Outer Limits
T.V. series. He received his primary and secondary education in the New York state public school system. In 1968, when Rivera was 12 years old, he saw a traveling company perform the play "Rumpelstiltskin
" at his school. Witnessing the collective reaction of the audience towards the play convinced the young Rivera that someday, he too, would like to write plays.
Make Me Hot and Adoration of the Old Woman. In 2003, Cloud Tectonics was presented in the XLII Festival of Puerto Rican Theater, an event sponsored by the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, in San Juan
.
Rivera helped found the Los Angeles-based theater company, The Wilton Project.
(1989) (TV series), The Jungle Book, Mowgli's Story
(1998), Night Visions (2001) (TV series) and in the "Harmony" segment of Shadow Realm (2002). He also co-created and co-produced the NBC-TV
series, Eerie, Indiana
.
) by director Walter Salles
. The movie, which was released in 2004, is based on Che Guevara
's diary about a motorcycle trip
which he and Alberto Granado
had, and how it changed their lives. In January 2005, Rivera became the first Puerto Rican to be nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
for "Best Adapted Screenplay" for the film. His screenplay won awards from the Cinema Writers Circle (Spain) and from the Argentine Film Critics Association; it was also nominated for awards by the American Screenwriters Association, the Chlotrudis Awards
, the Online Film Critics Society
, and the Writers Guild of America
.
This work with the subject of Che Guevara later led Rivera to write and perform a play entitled School of the Americas which focuses on Che's last few hours alive. The play starring John Ortiz as Che, imagines Che's final conversations, mainly with a young and fairly naive female schoolteacher, in the one-room village schoolhouse where he is imprisoned before his execution. The play was featured in New York City
2006-2007 and later San Francisco 2008.
. His education was directed towards the Anglo-Euro Cultures, without receiving any exposure to the literature and writers of Latin America
. However, he was profoundly influenced later by a Latin American novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by 1982 Nobel Prize
winner Gabriel García Márquez
. Márquez later became his mentor at the Sundance Institute
.
Rivera incorporates many of his life experiences into his plays. In The Promise and Each Day Dies With Sleep, Rivera discusses his experiences as a Puerto Rican in a small American town, with an emphasis on family, sexuality
, spirituality and the occult
. Marisol was inspired by the situation of his homeless uncle.
s for playwriting, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American plays Grant, a Fulbright Arts Fellowship in playwriting, the Whiting Writers' Award
, a McKnight Fellowship, the 2005 Norman Lear
Writing Award, a 2005 Impact Award and a Berilla Kerr Playwriting Award.
. Rivera will also direct and write the screenplay for "Celestina", a film loosely adapted from his play "Cloud Tectonics", which will be produced by Walter Salles. Among his future projects is the movie adaptation of On the Road
, a novel
by Jack Kerouac
.
many of these plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and the first Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
to be nominated for an Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
.
Early years
Rivera was born in the SanturceSanturce, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Santurce is a district of San Juan, Puerto Rico.-Summary:Santurce is one of the top ten most populated areas of the island holding Miramar, Loíza, Isla Grande, Barrio Obrero, and Condado as main cultural hot spots for art, music, cuisine, fashion, hotels, technology, multimedia, film, textile and...
section of San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...
in 1955. He was raised in Arecibo
Arecibo, Puerto Rico
Arecibo is a municipality in the northern midwest coast of Puerto Rico and located by the Atlantic Ocean, north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta, and Florida. Arecibo is spread over 18 wards and Arecibo Pueblo...
where he lived until 1959. Rivera's family migrated from Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
when he was 4 years old, and moved to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. They settled down in Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, whose small town environment would be of an influence to him in the future. His parents were very religious and he grew up in a household whose only book was the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. His family enjoyed telling stories and he learned a lot by hearing these stories. As a child, he also enjoyed watching The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising...
and The Outer Limits
The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories...
T.V. series. He received his primary and secondary education in the New York state public school system. In 1968, when Rivera was 12 years old, he saw a traveling company perform the play "Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin is the eponymous character and protagonist of a fairy tale which originated in Germany . The tale was collected by the Brothers Grimm, who first published it in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales...
" at his school. Witnessing the collective reaction of the audience towards the play convinced the young Rivera that someday, he too, would like to write plays.
Career
Many of his plays have been produced across the nation and even translated into several languages, including: The House of Ramon Iglesias, Cloud Tectonics, The Street of the Sun, Sonnets for an Old Century, Sueño, Giants Have Us in Their Books, References to Salvador DalíSalvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
Make Me Hot and Adoration of the Old Woman. In 2003, Cloud Tectonics was presented in the XLII Festival of Puerto Rican Theater, an event sponsored by the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, in San Juan
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...
.
Rivera helped found the Los Angeles-based theater company, The Wilton Project.
Television
Rivera contributed as a writer to the following shows: The House of Ramon Iglesias (1986) (TV), Family MattersFamily Matters (TV series)
Family Matters is an American sitcom about a middle-class African-American family living in Chicago, Illinois, which ran on national television for nine full seasons. The series was a spin-off of Perfect Strangers, but revolves around the Winslow family...
(1989) (TV series), The Jungle Book, Mowgli's Story
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book is a collection of stories by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six...
(1998), Night Visions (2001) (TV series) and in the "Harmony" segment of Shadow Realm (2002). He also co-created and co-produced the NBC-TV
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
series, Eerie, Indiana
Eerie, Indiana
Eerie, Indiana is an American television series that aired on NBC from 1991 to 1992 and then on syndication on Fox from 1997 to 1998. The series was created by José Rivera and Karl Schaefer, with Joe Dante serving as creative consultant.-Premise:...
.
TV Appearances
Rivera was featured in The Dialogue interview series. In this 90 minute interview with producer Mike DeLuca, Rivera describes his transition from playwright to Oscar-nominated screenwriter.The Motorcycle Diaries
In 2002, Rivera was hired to write the screenplay for the film Diarios de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle DiariesThe Motorcycle Diaries (film)
At the end of the film, after his sojourn at the leper colony, Guevara confirms his nascent egalitarian, anti-authority impulses, while making a birthday toast, which is also his first political speech. In it he evokes a pan-Latin American identity that transcends both the arbitrary boundaries of...
) by director Walter Salles
Walter Salles
Walter Moreira Salles, Jr. is a Brazilian filmmaker and film producer of international prominence.-Life and career:Salles was born in Rio de Janeiro. He is the son of Elizinha Goncalves and Walter Moreira Salles, a Brazilian banker and ambassador, and the brother of João Moreira Salles, also a...
. The movie, which was released in 2004, is based on Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
's diary about a motorcycle trip
The Motorcycle Diaries
The Motorcycle Diaries is a memoir that traces the early travels of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, then a 23-year-old medical student, and his friend Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old biochemist...
which he and Alberto Granado
Alberto Granado
Alberto Granado was an Argentine–Cuban biochemist, doctor, writer, and scientist. He was also the youthful friend and traveling companion of revolutionary Che Guevara during their 1952 trip around Latin America, and later founded the Santiago School of Medicine in Cuba...
had, and how it changed their lives. In January 2005, Rivera became the first Puerto Rican to be nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
for "Best Adapted Screenplay" for the film. His screenplay won awards from the Cinema Writers Circle (Spain) and from the Argentine Film Critics Association; it was also nominated for awards by the American Screenwriters Association, the Chlotrudis Awards
Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film
The Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film is a Boston-area non-profit organization that teaches audiences to view films actively through discussion, formal and informal education, discourse, film festivals, special screenings and collaboration. Their focus is on international and independent film...
, the Online Film Critics Society
Online Film Critics Society
The Online Film Critics Society is a professional association for film critics who publish their reviews, interviews, and essays on the Internet.The OFCS was founded in 1997...
, and the Writers Guild of America
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
.
This work with the subject of Che Guevara later led Rivera to write and perform a play entitled School of the Americas which focuses on Che's last few hours alive. The play starring John Ortiz as Che, imagines Che's final conversations, mainly with a young and fairly naive female schoolteacher, in the one-room village schoolhouse where he is imprisoned before his execution. The play was featured in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
2006-2007 and later San Francisco 2008.
Influences
In high school and later in college, he read everything that had to do with Shakespeare, Ibsen and MolièreMolière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
. His education was directed towards the Anglo-Euro Cultures, without receiving any exposure to the literature and writers of Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. However, he was profoundly influenced later by a Latin American novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by 1982 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
winner Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
. Márquez later became his mentor at the Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981 that actively advances the work of filmmakers and storytellers worldwide...
.
Rivera incorporates many of his life experiences into his plays. In The Promise and Each Day Dies With Sleep, Rivera discusses his experiences as a Puerto Rican in a small American town, with an emphasis on family, sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
, spirituality and the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
. Marisol was inspired by the situation of his homeless uncle.
Awards and honors
Rivera has won two Obie AwardObie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
s for playwriting, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American plays Grant, a Fulbright Arts Fellowship in playwriting, the Whiting Writers' Award
Whiting Writers' Award
The Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...
, a McKnight Fellowship, the 2005 Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
Writing Award, a 2005 Impact Award and a Berilla Kerr Playwriting Award.
Currently
Rivera currently lives in Hollywood, California. His newest play, "Brainpeople," premiered in San Francisco January 30, 2008, and was co-produced by the American Conservatory TheaterAmerican Conservatory Theater
American Conservatory Theater is a large non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. A.C.T. was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Tech by theatre and...
. Rivera will also direct and write the screenplay for "Celestina", a film loosely adapted from his play "Cloud Tectonics", which will be produced by Walter Salles. Among his future projects is the movie adaptation of On the Road
On the Road
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...
, a novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
.
Plays
- The House of Ramon Iglesia (1983)
- The Promise (1988)
- Each Day Dies With Sleep (1990)
- MarisolMarisol (play)Marisol is a play in two acts written by the Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera. The work earned Rivera a 1993 Obie Award for playwriting.-Synopsis:...
(1992) - Tape (1993)
- Flowers (1994)
- Giants Have Us In Their Books (1997)
- Cloud tectonicsCloud Tectonics-Overview:Cloud Tectonics is a one-act play by José Rivera, a dreamlike love story about its two protagonists, Aníbal de la Luna and Celestina del Sol. It is set in Los Angeles, with most of the action taking place in Aníbal's house...
(1995) - Maricela De La Luz Lights The World
- Godstuff
- Adoration of the Old Woman
- The Street of the Sun (1996)
- Sueno (1998)
- Lovers of Long Red Hair (2000)
- References To Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot (2000)
- Sonnets for an Old Century (2000)
- School of the Americas (2006)
- Massacre (Sing To Your Children) (2007)
- Brainpeople (2008)
- Boleros for the Disinchanted (2008) world premiere Yale Rep Theatre
- Human Emotional Process (2008) commissioned by McCarter Theatre
- Pablo and Andrew at the Altar of Words (2010)
- Golden (2010)
- The Kiss of the Spider Woman (translation) (2010)
many of these plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.
Broadway Play Publishing Inc.
Broadway Play Publishing Inc, along with Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Inc., and Samuel French Inc., is one of the four major New York play publishers and licensors of stage rights...
See also
- List of famous Puerto Ricans
- On the Road (film)On the Road (film)On the Road is a 2012 film adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel of the same name directed by Walter Salles and starring Sam Riley as Sal Paradise and Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty. It is being executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola. Filming began on August 4, 2010, in Montreal, Canada, with...
- List of Puerto Ricans in the Academy Awards
- List of Puerto Rican writers
- Puerto Rican literature
- Pacific Playwrights FestivalPacific Playwrights FestivalThe Pacific Playwrights Festival , a national forum for playwrights and theatre leaders, is dedicated to developing and producing new American plays. It is held every summer at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California....
External links
- The Dialogue: Learn from the Masters Interview
- Diction and Contradiction by Michael Feingold, Village Voice, July 4, 2006
- Jose Rivera's Che Guevara Play: "School of the Americas" by Delfin Vigil, January 20, 2008