A native of Houston, Jenni Rebecca Stephenson has been a student of dance and theatre, as well as vocal and instrumental music. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Houston, Jenni Rebecca studied vocal performance with Katherine Ciesinski and received her bachelors of music from the Moores School of Music. She was a frequent soloist with the Moores Concert Chorale and performed such musical theatre/opera roles as Carla (Nine), Jenny Diver (Threepenny Opera), the Baroness (Barber’s Vanessa), and Arcetro (Peri’s Euridice). Jenni Rebecca later received her Masters of Fine Arts in Theatre Directing at UH, where she directed for the Stuart Ostrow Musical Theatre Collaboration and the Edward Albee New Playwrights Workshop, as well as three full-length operas at the Moores Opera Center: The Impresario, La finta giardiniera, and Die Fledermaus. Additionally, she was assistant director of several productions for The Ebony Opera Guild at Miller Outdoor Theatre under Buck Ross, as well as the most recent production of Cats at Theatre Under The Stars.
In 2006, Jenni Rebecca co-founded Nova Arts Project, a nonprofit theatre company dedicated to recreating classics and inspiring new works in a fearlessly theatrical way. With Nova, Jenni Rebecca directed Antigone in Oedipus^3, as well as The Joy Luck Club, a collaboration between the Asian Pacific-American Heritage Association and the Houston Public Libraries for the NEA’s Big Read Campaign. As a performer, she has appeared in the roles of Gertrude (Hamlet), Last Day Girl/Ma/Fran (TempOdyssey), and Lady Lillian Loveworthy in Love Loves a Pornographer. She and her fellow founders of Nova received one of the first Houston Press Mastermind Awards in 2009. She joined the board of Spacetaker in September 2007, became Managing Director in July 2008, and succeeded David Brown as Executive Director in December 2009.
