Yadira De La Riva

Yadira is a poet, playwright, performer, and educator from the US-Mexico borderland of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. In 2002, she was an intern for the Theater of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro, where she worked with director Augusto Boal. She earned her BA in American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2004.

She came to Gallatin to develop the performance and directing skills needed to create innovative arts curricula for people of color who have survived personal or social trauma. As part of her Gallatin program, she studied in Mexico at the Mexico Solidarity Network Study Abroad Program, which is dedicated to educating scholars about underrepresented communities throughout Mexico that are negatively affected by US-Mexico economic policies. Her concentration was Performance as Cultural Resistance. For her thesis, her one-woman show, One Journey: Stitching Stories Across the Mexican "American" Border, was performed as part of the Emerging Identities Solo Performance Collaborative, Emerging Artist Theater: One Woman Standing Theater Festival, and Gallatin's spring 2010 Master's Thesis Showcase.

Yadira has performed in various multicultural community venues throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and she has taught theater workshops for young people in California, Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil. She currently teaches in various schools throughout New York City.