Interviewed on NBC Nightly Newsfor Sesame Street’s 40 Anniversary. Guest appearances include The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. She regularly reads for their adult literacy program All-Write. She is an advisor for literary NY institution Symphony Space and is often a reader for Selected Shorts. Movies include Deathwish, Follow That Birdand Elmo in Grouchland. Manzano has performed on the New York stage in the critically acclaimed theater pieces The Vagina Monologues and The Exonerated and Love Loss and What I Wore. She was thrilled to help write the story line for “Maria’s” marriage and birth of “Maria’s” baby, played for a while by Manzano’s real-life daughter Gabriela. Within a year, Manzano joined the production of Sesame Street, where she eventually began writing scripts for the series. A scholarship took her to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and in her junior year, she came to New York to star in the original production of the off-Broadway show Godspell. She was accepted there and began her career as an actress. Manzano was raised in the South Bronx where her involvement in the arts was inspired by teachers who encouraged her to audition for the High School of Performing Arts. Sonia Manzano is a first-generation American of Latino descent who has affected the lives of millions of parents and children since the early 1970s, when she was offered an opportunity to play “Maria” on Sesame Street.
