Reinaldo Povod (1960 - July 30, 1994 Brooklyn) was an American playwright. [1]
Reinaldo Povod, known to his friends as Rei (Ray) grew up on the Lower East Side. The son of a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father of Russian descent. [2] In 1977, his play Cries and Shouts played at the Nuyorican Poets Café, where Mr. Povod was a protege of Miguel Piñero. [3] Bill Hart brought Mr. Povod to the attention of Joseph Papp, who invited him to become a resident playwright at the Public Theater. In 1986, Cuba and His Teddy Bear opened on Broadway, with Robert De Niro in the lead, for which Mr. Povod received the George Oppenheimer/Newsday Award (The Oppy). [4] In 2009, Cuba and His Teddy Bear received its Chicago premiere by the Urban Theater Company and People's Theater of Chicago. [5] Reinaldo Povod co-authored the play Super Fishbowl Sunday with longtime friend and collaborator Richard Barbour, which was produced in 2001 at the Krane Theater in Manhattan, directed by Mr. Barbour. [6] The play Super Fishbowl Sunday has since been adapted into a screenplay by Richard Barbour and Joseph Barbour and is in pre-production at Bergen Street Ent.
Mr. Povod died at the age of 34 from TB and complications from AIDS.
Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who is known as a vocal critic of Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution, and the Cuban government. His memoir of the Cuban dissident movement and of being a political prisoner, Before Night Falls, was dictated after his escape to the United States during the 1980 Mariel boatlift and published posthumously. Arenas, who was dying of AIDS, had committed suicide with an intentional overdose.
Miguel Piñero was a Puerto Rican born American playwright, actor and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was a leading member of the Nuyorican literary movement.
Nilo Cruz is a Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, he became the second Latino so honored, after Nicholas Dante.
The Nuyorican movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans. It originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in neighborhoods such as Loisaida, East Harlem, Williamsburg, and the South Bronx as a means to validate Puerto Rican experience in the United States, particularly for poor and working-class people who suffered from marginalization, ostracism, and discrimination.
Arsenic and Old Lace is a play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring, written in 1939. It has become best known through the 1944 film adaptation starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra.
Paul Calderón is a Puerto Rican actor, writer, director and producer. He is a founding member of the Touchstone Theatre, the American Folk Theatre and the LAByrinth Theater Company. He is also a member of the Actors Studio, auditioning and accepted as a member in 1984 alongside Melissa Leo and two other actors. He is best known for portraying Raymond Cruz in the 1998 crime comedy film Out of Sight and the 2023 neo-Western crime drama miniseries Justified: City Primeval.
Paul Rudnick is an American writer. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway and around the world. He is also known for having written the screenplays for several movies, including Sister Act, Addams Family Values, Jeffrey, and In & Out.
Short Eyes is a 1974 drama written by playwright Miguel Piñero. The play premiered at the Theater of the Riverside Church, was then produced off-Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater on February 28, 1974, and transferred after 54 performances to the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Broadway on May 23, 1974. Short Eyes, prison slang for a child molester, was written for a prisoners' writing workshop during Piñero's incarceration for armed robbery.
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is an 8½ hour-long adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1839 novel, performed in two parts. Part 1 was 4 hours in length with one interval of 15 minutes. Part 2 was 4½ hours in length with two intervals of 12 minutes. It was originally presented onstage over two evenings, or in its entirety from early afternoon with a dinner break. Later it was presented on television over four evenings.
Theater for the New City, founded in 1971 and known familiarly as "TNC", is one of New York City's leading off-off-Broadway theaters, known for radical political plays and community commitment. Productions at TNC have won 43 Obie Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. TNC currently exists as a 4-theater complex in a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) space at 155 First Avenue, in the East Village of Manhattan.
Eduardo Oscar Machado is a Cuban playwright living in the United States. Notable plays by Machado include Broken Eggs, Havana is Waiting and The Cook. Many of his plays are autobiographical or deal with Cuba in some way. Machado teaches playwriting at New York University. He has served as the artistic director of the INTAR Theatre in New York City since 2004. He is openly gay.
Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child.
Bruce Norris is an American character actor and playwright associated with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago. His play Clybourne Park won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Wanda De Jesus is an American character actress.
Michael Carmine was an American actor.
Rajiv Joseph is an American playwright. He was named a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, and he won an Obie Award for Best New American Play for his play Describe the Night.
Michael Clinton Irby is an American actor known for portraying Sergeant First Class Charles Grey in the CBS series The Unit (2006–2009), and more recently, for his work as Obispo 'Bishop' Losa in Mayans M.C. (2018–2023) and Cristobal Sifuentes on the HBO series Barry (2018–2023).
Leon Ichaso was a Cuban-born American writer and film director. Some of his prominent works included El Super, Crossover Dreams, Bitter Sugar,Piñero, and El Cantante.
Jeffrey Weiss was an American playwright, impresario, and actor, both on Broadway and a theater he ran with partner Ricardo Martinez in the East Village, Manhattan.
Gordon Stanley is an American stage actor.