José Rivera (playwright)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
José Rivera (born 1955 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a playwright and the first Puerto Rican screenplay writer to be nominated for an Oscar.
Contents |
[edit] Early years
Rivera was born in the Santurce section of San Juan and lived in Arecibo 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 a 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. In high school and later in college, he read everything that had to do with Shakespeare, Ibsen and Molière. His education was directed towards the Anglo-Euro Cultures, without receiving any exposure to the literature and writers of Latin America.
[edit] Influences
The literary experience which was to have a profound influence in his life was when he read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. Márquez, who is also the recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, was later to become his mentor at the Sundance Institute.
Rivera incorporated many of his life experiences into the plays that he wrote. In "The Promise" and "Each Day Dies With Sleep", Rivera discusses the experiences he went through 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. Among his other plays which are produced across the nation and that have been translated into several languages are: "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 Dalí Make Me Hot" and " Adoration of the Old Woman". In 2003, his play "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 has won two Obie Awards for playwriting, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American plays Grant, a Fulbright arts Fellowship in playwriting, the Whiting foundation Writing Award and a McKnight Fellowship.
[edit] The Motorcycle Diaries
In 2002, Rivera was hired to write the screenplay for the film "Diarios de Motocicleta" (The Motorcycle Diaries) 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. On January 2005, Rivera became the first Puerto Rican to be nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the "Best Adapted Screenplay" Academy Award.
Rivera has also contributed to the following shows: "The House of Ramon Iglesias" (1986) (TV) as writer, "Family Matters" (1989) (TV series) as writer, "The Jungle Book, Mowgli's Story" (1998) as teleplay writer, "Night Visions" (2001) (TV series) as writer and "Shadow Realm" (2002) in segment harmony. He also co-created and co-produced the NBC-TV series, "Eerie, Indiana".
[edit] Currently
José Rivera currently lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, actress/producer Sona Tatoyan. His newest play, "Massacre (Sing to Your Children)," premieres in Chicago April 2, 2007, in a co-production of Teatro Vista and the Goodman Theatre. 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.
