nepaa@unirio.br
NEPAA
Zeca Ligiéro is theater/video director and
scholar specializing in Afro-Brazilian culture. He is Ph.D., Department of
Performance Studies, New York University, where he completed his Master
degree under a Fulbright scholarship, 1988. He has published Teatro e
Comunidade, Uma Experiência (Theater and Community, An
Experiment) (Uberlândia M.G: Editora UFU, 1983), and Teatro
Infantil de Zeca Ligiéro (Zeca Ligiéro’s Theater for
Children), (Uberlândia, M.G.: Editora UFU, 1986);
Iniciação ao Candomblé (Initiation to
Candomblé), (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1992), the same title
was translated into Spanish and published by Panamericana Editorial,
Colombia, 1995; and he is one of the four authors of Divine Inspiration
from Benin to Bahia edited by Phyllis Galembo (Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1993), and Umbanda Paz, Liberdade e Cura
(Umbanda, Peace, Freedom and Healing) in collaboration with Dandara
(Editora Record, Rio de Janeiro, 1998). He is currently working on a book
titled Carmen Miranda, an African-Brazilian Paradox to appear at
Temple University Press (Philadelphia). On the field of Afro-Brazilian
culture he has published several articles in popular Brazilian magazine
Ano Zero (Rio de Janeiro), and Icarus Journal (New York City).
Zeca Ligiéro has taught in the University of
Rio de Janeiro (UNI-RIO) for the past 15 years, and he founded the
Graduate Theater Department there, of which he was Chair for two years
(1990-92), and currently he is Assistant Chair. In Brazil, he adapted and
directed plays and won several prizes; he wrote the script Pivete
based on the Jorge Amado’s novel Capitães da Areia for the
Dance Brazil Company, and Elegba Crossings, A Journey of Spirit
produced by Madame Walker Theater Center from Indianapolis, both
performances have toured all over the United States. In collaboration with
the singer and writer Dandara, he has developed the Samba-Drama
project in Rio de Janeiro and New York since 1991. In New York, he has
lectured about Afro-Brazilian culture at the New School, the Museum for
African Arts, the American Museum of Natural History and the New York
University. He is the president of Alafia Media Arts and Media Inc., a
non-for-profit organization to support creative and academic works on
African-Amerindian cultures in both countries the United States and
Brazil. He is collaborating with The Hemispheric Institute, an
international project developed by Department of Performance Studies, NYU,
his NEPAA (Núcleo de Estudo das Performances
Afro-Ameríndias) and the Pontifice Universidad Catolica de Lima
(Peru), and sponsored by Ford Foundation).
