2023 Fellow

Rita Valente-Quinn

Rita Valente-Quinn
Producing Director, Motus Theater

2023 Livingston Fellowship films made by Infusion5

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Meet Rita

Dr. Rita M. Rufino Valente-Quinn is a first-generation immigrant from Portugal. She has 15 years’ experience working as a performing arts administrator, producer, and curator in the nonprofit sector.

Since 2017, Rita has been working at Motus Theater as Producing Director. At Motus, Rita is responsible for the oversight of funding, staff, and operations, assuring that Motus can continue to offer innovative theatrical programming for years to come. Throughout her tenure at Motus, Rita has supported the production of nationally acclaimed and unprecedented projects at the intersection of original theater and public policy, including Law Enforcement Leaders Read DREAMer Stories, UndocuAmerica, and JustUs.

Before joining Motus, Rita led and collaborated with professional teams around the world to bring theater and dance projects to fruition for audiences in diverse contexts. Her experience working in the nonprofit performing arts sector began in Portugal at a performing arts and land art festival called Escrita na Paisagem (“Writing in the Landscape”), where Rita worked to bring high-quality arts experiences to the rural communities of Alentejo, in southern Portugal, an endeavor which proved deeply impactful for both artists and audiences.

Rita has a Ph.D. in Culture & Performance Studies from UCLA. As part of her doctoral fieldwork, she studied and collaborated with nonprofit organizations and theater festivals in Brazil and Cape Verde, where she had the opportunity to work and interact with artists from Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, S. Tomé and Princípe, Portugal, Macau (China), and East Timor. She examined how artists from each of these Portuguese-speaking countries grappled, as representatives of their countries and as theater-makers, with the legacies of Portuguese colonialism, finding that they did so by initiating performances, engaging in networking, and pursuing co-productions across borders. The experience reinforced Rita’s commitment to dismantling systemic oppression by understanding colonial histories and intersectional identities through a focus on anti-racism and equity; it also affirmed her belief that the arts can lead to cultural and even policy changes that make it possible to dismantle such systems.