EVA OLIVIA CANTANZARITI
Biography
Eva Olivia Catanzariti is a professional actor and intimacy/fight director local to Houston. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston’s Professional Actor Training Program. She’s performed with theaters across the country and in Houston, including the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, The Company Theater, Rec Room Arts, Classical Theater Company, and more. Eva is a professor with Lone Star College-University Park’s Department of Drama. She’s taught acting at Houston Grand Opera’s Bauer Family High School Voice Studio, the University of Houston, and the Southwest Public Schools Visual and Performing Arts Academy. She recently directed intimacy for Death of A Salesman at Rec Room Arts and The Moors at University of Houston. She is a certified Actor Combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors. This spring she’ll be directing and performing in a series of music videos for the band oh, hooray, for whom she recently choreographed movement in Houston’s Mix-MATCH festival. She looks forward to performing the roles of Hermia and Titania in the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream this July.
Eva has been performing since she was five years old, when she began dancing with the Boston Ballet and Jose Matteo Ballet Theater. She studied opera at New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School, the Bel Canto Institute of Florence, Italy, and the Hartt School. Following 2016, she transitioned to a career in advocacy before returning to the performing arts, which informs her work as an intimacy director. During that time, she co-founded and facilitated a support group for teens while working at her local trauma services agency as a court advocate and crisis hotline volunteer. She was a grant manager and victim services advocate with the New Bedford Women’s Center, where she worked to improve the county’s criminal justice response to sexual assault/domestic violence.