José Rivera

Career Many of Rivera's plays have been produced nationwide and translated into several languages, including The House of Ramon Iglesia, 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, Cloud Tectonics was presented at the XLII Festival of Puerto Rican Theater, an event sponsored by the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, in San Juan. Rivera also co-founded the Los Angeles-based theater company, The Wilton Project.

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 naïve 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.

La Bamba remake On August 26, 2024, it was announced that a remake of the 1987 movie La Bamba, which was based on the life and career of musician Ritchie Valens, was in the works with Rivera attached to write the script.

Influences In high school and later at Denison University, he immersed himself in the works of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Molière. His education centered on Anglo-Euro Cultures, leaving him with little exposure to the literature and writers of Latin America. However, he was profoundly influenced by the Latin American novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by 1982 Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, who later became his mentor at the Sundance Institute. Written on my Face (2012) Another Word for Beauty (2013) The Last Book of Homer (2013) The Garden of Tears and Kisses (2014) Sermon for the Senses (2014) Charlotte (2014) The Untranslatable Secrets of Nikki Corona

Many of these plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.

Bibliography of Scholarly Criticism Toward a Rhetoric of Sociospatial Theatre: José Rivera's Marisol By: J. Chris Westgate, Theatre Journal, 2007 March; 59 (1): 21–37. Split Personality: Random Thoughts on Writing for Theater and Film By: José Rivera, Cinema Journal, 2006 Winter; 45 (2): 89–92. The Motorcycle Diaries By: Yon Motskin, Creative Screenwriting, 2005 January-Feb; 12 (1): 89. 'An Urgent Voice for Our Times': An Interview with José Rivera By: Caridad Svich, Contemporary Theatre Review: An International Journal, 2004 November; 14 (4): 83–89. Die Imaginierung ethnischer Weltsicht im neueren amerikanischen Drama By: Herbert Grabes, IN: Schlote and Zenzinger, New Beginnings in Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama: Essays in Honour of Armin Geraths. Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher; 2003. pp. 327–44 José Rivera By: Miriam Chirico, IN: Wheatley, Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, Third Series. Detroit, MI: Thomson Gale; 2002. pp. 281–301 Marisol, Angels, and Apocalyptic Migrations By: Jon D. Rossini, American Drama, 2001 Summer; 10 (2): 1-20. An Interview with Jose Rivera By: Norma Jenckes, American Drama, 2001 Summer; 10 (2): 21–47. Dream Editor By: Stephanie Coen, American Theatre, 1996 December; 13 (10): 26. Exile and Otherness: Examples from Three Continents By: Phyllis Zatlin, Hispanofila, 1993 January; 107: 33–41. Poverty and Magic in Each Day Dies with Sleep By: José Rivera, Studies in American Drama, 1945–present, 1992; 7 (1): 163–232. An Interview with José Rivera By: Lynn Jacobson, Studies in American Drama, 1945–present, 1991; 6 (1): 49–58.