Karen Olivo Returns to the Stage at Collaboraction's Peacbook Festival This October

Actor, activist and Tony Award-winner Karen Olivo has been added to the line-up of Collaboraction's 6th annual Peacebook Festival on Saturday, October 2 at the Kehrein Center for the Arts in Chicago's Austin community.

Olivo will be one of the seven Gifts of Peace solo artists sharing their perspectives on peace with Collaboraction's audience, live and in-person.

In addition to performing in-person at Peacebook, Olivo will be a live guest on Collaboraction's Crucial Connections tomorrow, Thursday, September 16 at 8 p.m. CT.

Olivo joins fellow Peacebook soloists Abad Visquez, Ada Cheng, Dr. Ameena Matthews, David Flores, John Johnson, Loretta Firekeeper Hawkins and Molly Brennan. Crucial Connections is free to join virtually, but advance registration is required. Go to collaboraction.org to register. Tickets to see Olivo live at Peacebook on Saturday, October 2 are $5-$35. Performances start at 5:30 p.m. The Kehrein Center for the Arts is located at 5628 W. Washington Blvd. in Austin. Go to collaboraction.org to purchase tickets.

Karen Olivo (she/they) is a multi-hyphenate living/working on the ancestral lands of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Madison, WI. She is most widely known for their acting work that spans the last 25 years on Broadway and TV. In the Spring of 2020, Olivo co-founded the non-for-profit organization, AFECT- Artists for Economic Transparency (afectchange.org), in an effort to educate the industry and promote discussion regarding entertainment industry structures and how they can be altered to better support underserved communities.

"Building a better industry is more important than putting money in my pockets," Olivo said. Olivo's most recent theatrical work is for playing "Satine" in Moulin Rouge, The Musical for which they received their second Tony Award nomination. Olivo is also recognized for their Tony Award-winning performance as "Anita" in the acclaimed 2009 Broadway revival of West Side Story, a role for which she also earned Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Astaire Award nominations.

Some of their Broadway theater credits include originating the role of "Vanessa" in the Tony Award-winning musical, In the Heights (2008 Astaire Award), starring as "Faith" in the Broadway production of Brooklyn the Musical, and in Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning musical, Rent. Olivo is familiar to Chicago audiences, too, having portrayed Angelica Schuyler in the Chicago production of Hamilton from 2016 to 2017.

Olivo is also recognized for her many television appearances including a series regular, recurring and guest-starring roles on "Harry's Law", "The Good Wife," "Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior," "Chase," "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," "Conviction," and "Law & Order." As an educator Olivo has worked at Northwestern University, NYU-Tisch, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as working as a visual artist, writer, and vocalist. Their 1st solo album LEAVE was released in 2018.