Honorary Board
Junta de Directores Honorífica
Moisés Kaufman
Playwright / Director
MOISÉS KAUFMAN is the founder and artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project, an award-winning director and playwright, and an activist-in-art. In recognition of his contributions to the theater and to international conversations about social justice, he has received numerous professional and humanitarian honors.
Moisés is an Obie Award and Lucille Lortel Award winner, a 2002 Guggenheim Fellow in Playwriting, winner of the 2002 Humanitas Prize, and has been nominated for Tony, Emmy, and Drama Desk Awards. He was awarded the 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, which he accepted in a 2016 ceremony at the White House.
Moisés was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1963, and he grew up surrounded by the city’s thriving international performance scene. He studied with several theater companies at home and then, in 1987, moved to New York City to complete his education at New York University. He attended NYU’s groundbreaking Experimental Theatre Wing, where he deepened his investigation of the role of text in the creative process and his love of challenge in theatrical structure. When he finished school in 1991, Moisés founded Tectonic Theater Project with his husband, Jeff LaHoste. Many of their first collaborators came from Moisés’ artistic circle at the Experimental Theatre Wing.
Tectonic’s early productions were a natural expansion upon the themes that had absorbed Moisés in his studies: structurally difficult plays demanding extensive problem-solving in stagecraft. He found his path to creative maturity, though, in applying that passion for form and experimentation to his own new work, most notably 1997’s critically acclaimed Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, which ran Off-Broadway for a year and a half. Gross Indecency gained Moisés and the company national recognition and its success enabled them to travel to Laramie, Wyoming to pursue their next undertaking.
That next work, The Laramie Project (which Moisés wrote in collaboration with members of Tectonic after an extensive community-based research process), is an examination of the cultural conflict surrounding the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. It opened at the Denver Theater Center in March 2000 and moved to New York shortly thereafter. TIME called Laramie “one of the 10 best plays of 2000,” and it was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. It was also recently selected by the New York Times as one of their “25 Best American Plays Since ‘Angels in America’” and remains among the most performed plays in the United States each year. In 2002, Moisés co-wrote and
directed HBO’s film adaptation of The Laramie Project, which garnered two Emmy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Writer.
In the years since Gross Indecency first brought his methods to wider attention, Moisés has continued to refine his devising process with Tectonic, always with an aim toward using the powers unique to theater to explore primary sources and understand underrepresented stories—old and new. His writing and adaptation credits include 33 Variations (2007), The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later (2008), One Arm (2011), and Carmen (2013-2016); as artistic director he has also guided the development of Anushka Paris-Carter and Andy Paris’s Uncommon Sense (2017).
Moisés is also a dedicated teacher. Since 2000, he and the company’s teaching artists have been sharing Tectonic’s techniques in lectures, training labs, and educational residencies. In 2018, he co-wrote Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project’s Process of Devising Theater (Vintage), a comprehensive introduction to his theatrical principles and the company’s creative tools.
On Broadway, Moisés has directed Paradise Square, which garnered 10 Tony Award nominations, the Off-Broadway revival (Second Stage) and Broadway transfer of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song, the 2012 revival of The Heiress with Jessica Chastain, the Tony-nominated 33 Variations with Jane Fonda, Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer Prize finalist Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo with Robin Williams, and Doug Wright’s Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning I Am My Own Wife with Jefferson Mays.
Other directing credits include Here There Are Blueberries (Tectonic Theater Project/La Jolla Playhouse), Seven Deadly Sins (Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience, Tectonic Theater Project/Madison Wells Live), One Arm by Tennessee Williams (Tectonic Theater Project/The New Group); The Tallest Tree in the Forest with Mark Taper (Brooklyn Academy of Music), The Nightingale (La Jolla Playhouse), The Common Pursuit (Roundabout), Macbeth with Liev Schreiber (Public Theater), This Is How It Goes (Donmar Warehouse), Tennessee Williams’s One Arm (New Group and Steppenwolf Theatre Company), El Gato con Botas (New Victory Theater), Master Class with Rita Moreno (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), and Into the Woods (Kansas City Repertory Theatre).
Kaufman is actively developing other new works including Treatment & Data, Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard, and a solo show co-created and performed by renowned drag queen and performance artist, Sasha Velour.
Rita Moreno
actress/singer/dancer
Rita Moreno has influenced the entertainment industry for over 70 years as an actress, singer, and dancer. After earning the four major entertainment awards: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, Moreno became the first Latina woman to have an “E.G.O.T.” In 2004, she was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her many contributions to the arts.
Rita Moreno was born on December 11, 1931 in Humacao, Puerto Rico. Given the nickname “Rosita,” when she was young, Moreno’s birth name was Rosa Dolores Alverío. She spent much of her childhood on a Puerto Rican farm until she was five years old. Her mother saved enough money for them to move to New York, but Moreno’s little brother Francisco had to be left behind. When she arrived in New York City, Moreno began taking dance classes and quickly started working in the film industry. She was first hired at age 11 to record Spanish language versions of American films. Shortly after this, Moreno made her Broadway debut at age 13 as “Angelina” in Skydrift. This role caught the attention of Hollywood filmmakers and she started receiving offers from Hollywood agents. Her first film was called So Young, So Bad, and was released in 1950. After this role, she signed a seven-year contract with Louis B. Mayer’s MGM Studios where she adopted the stage name Rita Moreno.
For the next few years, Moreno was offered smaller roles in feature films. Her first role for MGM Studios was in the musical The Toast of New Orleans. Two years later, she landed a small role as the actress Zelda Zanders in Singin’ in the Rain. Moreno was often typecast and remembers frequently being offered stereotypical “ethnic” or sexualized roles. Casting directors asked her to depict various ethnicities including; Hawaiian, Native American, Egyptian, Filipino, and a young Burmese woman named Tuptim in The King and I. In 1961, Moreno was cast as Anita in the film adaptation of the musical West Side Story. For her portrayal, Moreno won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Even after winning the Oscar, Moreno’s agents still only submitted her for “exotic” and Latina roles. Moreno decided to leave the mistreatment of Hollywood and mostly acted in summer theater for the next seven years.
In the 1970s, Moreno decided to return to the entertainment industry with popular films such as The Night of the Following Day, Carnal Knowledge, and Marlowe. Upon her return, Moreno also starred as a main cast member of the PBS children’s television series The Electric Company from 1971 to 1977. Moreno won a Grammy in 1972 for “The Electric Company Album” based on her contributions to the show’s soundtrack. A few years later, Moreno appeared in the musical The Ritz and subsequently earned the 1975 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress. During this time, she also appeared on various television shows as a guest. In 1977, Moreno appeared on The Muppet Show and earned a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program. This award solidified her as the third person in history and first Latina to win all four major entertainment awards: an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony.
Shortly after, Moreno earned another Primetime Emmy for her role on the television show The Rockford Files. She also voiced the role of Carmen Sandiego on the Fox cartoon series Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? In the late 1990s, Moreno continued to star on television and played a psychologist in the HBO series OZ. She won several ALMA Awards for her work. Moreno’s talent and influence has also been recognized by the White House. She was invited to perform at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2004, and received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2009. At 87 years-old, Moreno has won countless lifetime achievement awards but does not show any signs of slowing down. She currently starts as Lydia on the Netflix series One Day at a Time, and she is set to executive produce and star in Steven Spielberg’s 2020 remake of West Side Story.
