BIO
“Angela Kariotis is a one woman artistic showcase…in her trailblazing storytelling.” ~Rebecca Epstein, Los Angeles City Beat
angela ka RIOT is a Greek-American, writer, performer, scholar, and educator. As an extension of her activist work, Angela’s creative works provoke thought and entertain, while aimed at cultivating social change. This high energy work incorporates scopes of science, philosophy, and history, offering insight about our collective histories, greatest ideas, and thinking in new contexts. All of it brought to life on stage through movement, characters, and poetic drama. She incorporates unpredictable sources and material in her work creating an entirely new genre. And because Angela is an active participant from within the Hip Hop culture, much of her work is committed to Hip Hop theatre. Exploring, expanding, and exciting.
Angela pairs her unique background with modern performance art to produce a one-of-a-kind artistic experience. Using movement and gesture, she creates characters from her past and fuses them with all genres of literature, prose, dramatic poetry, song, and more, addressing ideas of ethnicity, gender, and public policy.
While Angela pulls much of her material from life, she sharpened her skills at Seton Hall University (Winner, Paidea Award, Excellence in Performance) and The University of Texas at Austin, Masters in Performance Studies and Communication Studies (Winner, Most Artistic, Texas Revue). Her first solo show, REMINISCENCE OF THE GHETTO & OTHER THINGS THAT RAIZED ME, directed and developed by the acclaimed multi-disciplinary performance artist Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, was awarded a National Performance Network residency and premeired by Woman & Their Work and the Rude Mechanicals in Austin, TX. Since then Angela has brought her unique performance style across America, playing in venues such as The University of California- Los Angeles (UCLA-Live) to Legion Arts in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and New York City with the Hip Hop Theater Festival. She was awarded the Tennessee Williams Theater Fellowship by the University of the South.
Her latest show, SAY LOGOS / SAY WORD, about bridging the gap between Ancient and Modern Greece, was commissioned by the People’s Light and Theater Company in Pennsylvania.
Angela was awarded a Lily Grant commission and wrote a one-act solo about Mother Seton titled, Dear Rememberences: The Lost Art of Letter Writing for Seton Hall University’s 150th Anniversary.
Breaking news: Angela was awarded a 2007 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Angela was featured as a Hip Hop Theatre artist at Planet Hip Hop 3 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and will be a workshop participant at Macondo, a workshop founded by writer Sandra Cisneros that takes place in San Antonio, TX. She teaches literacy through the arts, and is Managing Director of Elizabeth Youth Theatre Ensemble: Hip Hop On Stage. She is Artistic Associate at Plays for Living, writing and directing issue-based plays. Her short story, Happy Hair, was awarded honorable mention (1 of 10 chosen from 2,000 entries) in Francis Ford Copolla’s Zoetrope: All Story Fiction Contest. Full resume available upon request.
She’ll stop speaking in third person now. I mean, I will.
Reminiscence of the Ghetto &
other things that raized me
written & performed by Angela Kariotis
directed by Paul Bonin-Rodriguez
“Inspiring, enlightening, funny, heart-breaking and boundry-breaking…” NYTheatre.com
Odyssey Trippin’ (exploring the other-side of my hyphenated self)
Standing in the long line of tradition, what is our responsibility now based on who and what came before us? Because it’s all Greek to me, how can I fill the gap between Ancient Greece and Greece, and why is there a difference? I have been to Greece and this is what I learned: I am not Greek. I am Greek-American. Word.
