2024 Workshop Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Composition
J.Ed Araiza is a professor of Theater at The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).Where he lead an interdisciplinary Graduate Acting program and previously served as Chair of the Theater Department.
He was a principal actor and original member of the SITI Company, one of the world’s most important experimental theater ensembles. SITI was founded by Tadashi Suzuki and Anne Bogart. SITI Company. He is a proponent of Suzuki and Viewpoints training and for more than 30 years has performed in productions in major national and international venues. These include the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; the Olympic Arts Festival in Atlanta; the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Actors Theatre of Louisville; Los Angeles Theater Center; Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center; Harvard University’s American Repertory Theater; Scotland’s Edinburgh International Theatre Festival; Germany’s Biennale Bonn festival; Japan’s Toga International Festival; Ireland’s Dublin Theatre Festival; and Festival Le Standard Ideal, MC 93 Bobigny, in Paris.
As a playwright with seven original full-length plays produced, Araiza is a member of The Dramatist Guild. He has directed the plays Voluspa at the National Theatre of Iceland; Savitri, Dancing in the Forest of Death for the META Theatre Festival in Delhi India (nominated for best production and best director) and MEDEAstories, his original adaptation of the Euripides, with an international cast for the SITI Studio Theatre in New York and sections of 365 Days/365 Plays at the New York Public Theatre; He has also written and Miss Julia, a Bilingual powerplay, based on Strindberg, which has been performed in South America, Europe, LaMAMA ETC, and the LATC among many other venues.
Araiza has been a guest teacher at many universities including The Julliard School, SUNY Purchase, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Columbia University, New York University, National Theater Institute, Harvard University, University of Chicago, Pomona College, Vassar College and the University of Denver. He was a director, artist-in-residence/guest faculty for three semesters over three years at St. Edward’s University in Austin Texas; and director, artist-in-residence/Coastal Studies Chair at Bowdoin College in Maine. He was also a director, guest lecturer in acting and performance at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. Other international workshops he has led include those at the Singapore International Theatre Festival; South Korea’s Seoul Factory Theatre; the Norwegian Theatre Academy; the Icelandic Academy of the Arts; Festival Iberoamericano in Bogota, Columbia; and several residencies at TEAK the Finnish Theatre Academy, where he also directed his play Medeastories, translated as ”Kärlek + Svek = Sant”
In Fall 2011, before joining UCLA TFT full-time, Araiza served as a guest director in the Department of Theater working with M.F.A. students on a production of The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice.
In Los Angeles, he has performed with the SITI Company in their productions of Trojan Women, The Persians and The Bacchae, all at the Getty Villa. At the LATC he has performed in La Victima. In May 2022 he directed The Central Park Five, opera composed by Anthony Davis with libretto by Richard Wesley at the Long Beach Opera.