By Miya Williams
For Minda Cerva, all roads lead to theatre.
The MSLCE student wants to general manage and co-produce an original Broadway musical, helping to develop it from beginning inspiration to opening night.
“To have a true labor of love become a long-running critical and audience hit would be the penultimate dream,” she said.
Cerva’s father is also musical and, along with her mother, took her to see her first Broadway musical, Cats, when she was 5 years old. She recalled, “It was love at first standing ovation.”
At 12 or 13 she did her first musical with her father and has since been in dozens of local shows. She stated, “theatre and I are in a long-term relationship.”
Cerva graduated from Miami University, in Ohio, with a degree in theatre and a minor in arts administration. While there, she was cast in a play and a musical every year. As an undergraduate, she also spent a summer in the Czech Republic teaching theatre to junior high school students, which she identified as a “life-changing experience.”
After graduating with her bachelor’s degree, Cerva started a master’s program in theatre management but chose not to finish it.
“Though I walked away from school at that time, I knew at that moment that was the right place to be, but I was young and needed to explore,” she explained.
The Ohio native went on to work in the television and film industry in Los Angeles for eight years. However, she eventually realized that “live theatre is my home; so now I am ready to head back home.”
Despite her past on-stage experience, Cerva has never wanted to be an actor but instead wants to enable creatives to bring their ideas to fruition. She shared, “I would try to be the nuts a bolts person of the show and let the creatives be the driving force.”
Cerva has seen over 100 productions and while she has a preference for original Broadway musicals, she is interested in producing other formats as well. Revivals, plays, regional theatre shows and touring productions are all possibilities. Ultimately, she hopes to work at a company “that is doing groundbreaking and exciting commercial theatre in any form.
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