USP Alum María Zurita Ontiveros ’21 Reflects on Her Benenson Award

USP alumna María Zurita Ontiveros T’21 recently reflected on her path after having won the Benenson Awards in the Arts twice. Her first was awarded in 2019 as she did a directing internship at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, and her second in 2021 as she spent the summer after she graduated from Duke working with theater professor Torry Bend’s puppet show, Dreaming.

“My time at the National Theater Institute, supported by the Benenson, completely shaped how I do theater today,” said María. “The connections I developed at The O’Neill led to me working in an off-Broadway theater in New York (until I started my PhD), and the training I received empowered me to make theater wherever I go.”

María is currently a PhD candidate in Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University, as well as a practicing director, designer and puppeteer. You may read more about her reflection and experiences, as well as that of three other former Benenson Award winners, in this Duke Arts story.

Other USP Benenson alums include Foxx Hart T’24, who won a Benenson for the summer after his graduation to focus on a creative writing project called “Collective Abyss: (Re)imagining the Jung’s Archetypes; and Valerie Muensterman T’20, who used her funding to write a one-actor play.