Roger Grunwald

FOUNDER

Roger Grunwald is the founder and creator of The Mitzvah Project which has been presented in 27 states, Canada, the U.K. and Israel beginning in 2014. As a playwright, Grunwald penned I Died in Auschwitz.

In 2013 he was honored with grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts for the development of The Mitzvah – the play that is centerpiece of The Mitzvah Project.

During his five decades as a professional performing artist, Roger has appeared in over 80 stage productions in the United States and Europe and his voice and face have been heard on — and seen in — commercials, industrials, video games, feature films, primetime and daytime TV, as well as documentaries for HBO, Court Television Network and the Discovery Channel. 

He was a member of four different acting ensembles that, over a period of eight years, performed the stage drama Anne & Emmett. The play, which imagines a conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, was penned by Janet Langhart Cohen and has been presented at the De La Mar theatre in Amsterdam; at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC; at the New York City Police Academy; over two years at the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, NC, and at the United States Supreme Court at the invitation of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

  • In recent years, Roger was part of three productions at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater: co-starred in the premiere episode of the HBO primetime series, VINYL, under the direction of Martin Scorsese and was one of two leads in the short film, “One Good Pitch” that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. 

    In 1983 he co-founded New York's Castillo Theatre where he starred in over 45 productions.

    As a playwright, Grunwald penned I Died in Auschwitz, a full-length, one-person Holocaust drama that expands and deepens the story and characters of The Mitzvah. He performed in the play’s 2017 San Francisco world premiere and 2018 revival.

    He is a San Francisco native, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Director/performer, Annie McGreevey, played a key role in the initial development of The Mitzvah.

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