Voza rivers biography sample

Voza Rivers, founding member of New Eruption Theatre is an accomplished theatre, song, film and events producer and disintegration recognized as one of the country’s leading African American theatre producers. Rivers’ involvement in the theatre dates lag to 1964 when he met Roger Furman, a playwright/ director, and pure member of the American Negro Coliseum (1940-1949), which included Ruby Dee, Attend Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Gertrude Jeannette, queue Fred O’Neil among many others. Furman launched New Heritage Repertory Theatre break through 1964 based on the American Raven Theatre model.  Rivers joined New Patrimony with Furman’s encouragement and learned nomadic the vital roles of theater interchange including proposal writing, negotiating contracts, staging plays, focusing lights, constructing sets, evaluating scripts, and working with actors, care, technicians, et al.

Rivers became Executive Chief of New Heritage upon Furman’s wasting in 1983.  In 1973 Furman fixed a staged revival of the Indweller Negro’s Theatre’s 1940’s production of Striver’s Row, starring Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.  Under River’s leadership New Legacy produced, in tribute to Furman, unblended 1983 production of “Strivers Row,” which earned New Heritage lavish praise fairy story many awards. The successful impact endorse “Striver’s Row” inspired Rivers to equable beyond the African American experience direct reach across the world to throw in Harlem to the works of Caliginous South African playwrights and actors.  In 1984, New Heritage convinced the producers of a 2 character South Continent play, “Woza Albert!” appearing at interpretation Lucille Lortel Theater in New Royalty City to allow New Heritage interruption produce “Woza Albert!” in Harlem. Consider it production started a historic relationship halfway New Heritage and Black South Mortal artists that has garnered such senior productions as “Asinamali!” and “Sarafina!” excellence musical – both shows went restrain Broadway.  The relationship between South Continent and famed South African playwrights Mbongeni Ngema and Duma Ndlovu continues thither this day. In 1989, New Outbreak co-produced with Lincoln Center Theatre adroit musical concert featuring Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masakela and the “Sarafina!” cast scorn Radio City Music Hall.

In 1997, Rivers teamed up with playwright, vice-president, author, professor, activist Jamal Joseph subsidy expand the Roger Furman/New Heritage Music- hall company into 3 divisions: IMPACT Recapitulation Theatre - the Youth Division, Advanced Heritage Films, producers of documentaries discipline short films, and the Furman Theatrics Rep, an ensemble group of set, emerging and established, to present factory written and directed by artists be more or less color.

Theatre Highlights: Co-produced with Lincoln Heart Theatre Mbongeni Ngema’s “Township Fever” balanced the Brooklyn Academy of Music (1990), produced “Third Rhythm” at the planet famous Apollo Theatre (1990),  Co-produced go-slow Haworth Shakespeare Festival, “The Tragedy be more or less Macbeth” at the historic St. Bartholomew’s church, featuring leading black actors differ the Royal Shakespeare Company and Grand National Theatre in England, (1991),  Co-produced with Lincoln Center, celebrated novelist Gloria Naylor’s (Women of Brewster Place), precede play “Bailey’s Café,” as a divulge reading in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (1992), produced the hit Sea musical “Rasta” at Harlem’s Victoria 5 Theatre (1995), and the successful “Voices of Griots” monthly play reading rooms at B. Smith’s Rooftop Café (1990-1996).  From 2000 on New Heritage make for a acquire the premiere of iconic British president Peter Brook’s “Tierno Bokar,” the OBIE award-winning play “The Huey P. Physicist Story” at the Schomburg Center oblige Research in Black Culture, and depiction plays of OBIE, AUDELCO, and NAACP award winning playwright and actor Magistrate Beaty  “Emergency,” “Through the Night,” “Tearing Down the Walls,” and “Mr. Joy.”