Cynthia Renta is a multi-disciplinary, Afro-Indigenous LatinX Caribbean storyteller, ritual performance artist and folk dancer, cultural producer, and program director originally from Jersey City, NJ. She has spent two decades performing, producing, and directing community-participatory art experiences centering the praxis of liberation and evolution for BIPOC communities. She has performed with neo-folklore companies in the San Francisco, Bay Area, Los Angeles, NYC, and Puerto Rico. Exploring the traditions of cabaret and radical comedy of Latin America, she presented her most recent work, “Contraband: The Adventures of the Amazing is Doña Fefa”, at the Hemispheric Institute’s International Art Festival, “Encuentros” 2019 in Mexico City. Doña Fefa is an experimental, avant-garde performance art, movement altar procession/public protest piece giving light to the increased number of femicides and desaparecidas in both Puerto Rico and Mexico after their respective natural disasters – Hurricane Maria and the Earthquake of Puebla in 2017.
Cynthia has over twenty years of experience as a community organizer, training design professional, program director, and cultural equity strategist for schools and other public institutions. She has served for 15 years as a teaching artist working with grades K-12. Cynthia is a certified restorative practices trainer-of-trainers and circle-keeper, served as the Hudson County Youth Development Director of the YMCA of Newark, and was the Director of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College and a bachelor’s degree in Growth and Structures of Cities from Bryn Mawr College. She currently serves as a member of the Jersey City Theater Art Center Board of Directors.
Cynthia’s email address: cynthia@storytellingartsinc.org