Veronika "Vivi" Vozniak (born Weronika Wozniak) is an actress, dancer, and theatre maker based in New York City.
She was born in Poznań, Poland and stage career began at the age of 5 when she joined youth dance group Rytmix in Konin, Poland. While being a member of the dance group until 2006, she received such awards as 1st Place in The 27th International Song and Dance Festival . In 2006 she moved to Wroclaw, Poland and joined Dance Studio Gemar . In 2009, she won 8th Place in The World Championships of Hip-Hop, Electic Boogie and Break Dance in Kalisz.
She made her first camera appearance in TV Show Pierwsza Miłość as guest star in 2014. Two years later, Weronika decided to give a real shot to acting by moving to New York City and signing up for Conservatory Program at The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City. The first short film she has acted in, "Lost In The Wind", directed by then-NYU sophomore student Dan L. Nguyen Phan, was accepted to Cannes Festival Short Film Corner selection in 2016. Among teachers like Irma Sandrey, Geoffrey Horne, Robert Ellermann, Barry Shapiro, Mauricio Bustamante, Jeremy Kruse, Weronika also had the honor of participating in acting intensive taught by Vincent D'Onofrio in her final year.
Weronika made first steps in her theatrical career in The United States by joining the original Off-Broadway cast of an interactive stage-combat play "The Video Games" with MB Stage Productions at The Elektra Theatre (now Times Square Arts Center), where she appeared as a swing in 2016, and later on got cast as Shiek (from The Legend Of Zelda) in 2017.
During The Video Games production in NYC she got hooked on martial arts and soon after, she joined Ken Wa Kan Dojo under the mentorship of Shihan Michelle Gay – 5th-degree black belt and 5-time Women’s full contact champion and Certified Laban Movement Analyst. She received awards in karate tournaments, i. e. 1st and 2nd place on Kanreikai Open Championships in Danbury, CT. Weronika is currently a brown belt in this discipline.
From the end of 2017 and throughout 2018 Weronika Wozniak has been developing the movement and dance side of her abilities. She worked extensively on devised piece ‘The Vandals’ with The How Theatre Company, which has had 3 different iterations performing in Manhattan and Brooklyn. At the theatre company she met Polina Ionina, who became her long-term collaborator, with whom she co-directed "1776, A Fresh Start" and will continue to create with her later in the future.
As she has been getting settled in NYC, she discovered the power of her own Polish community by finding Polish Theatre Institute at Kosciuszko Foundation. She joined the institute's core team in 2019 and performed in a play "Cheating Flea" written by Jan Brzechwa before the pandemic in 2020. She has also been a part of pre-production and was featured actress in Bobkowski Project - an international project bringing artists and other professionals of Polish origin together during the quarantine by reading the 1957 book "Szkice Piórkiem" by Andrzej Bobkowski. Check out the latest episode at PTI Youtube Channel.
During the pandemic she has been part of quite a few productions online, whether on zoom, live streamed from theatres or behind the camera. In her first season with The Seeing Place, critically acclaimed Off-Off-Broadway ensemble, she performed online in the productions of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"(2020), "Dog Act"(2021), and "Queen With Conspiracy"(2021). She also acted in The Evening Crane Theatre’s play “Spyglass Seven” streamed for The International Edgar Allan Poe Festival and shot a period short film with the same company called "Caprices". Quarantine also gave her an opportunity to start something new - she began hosting her own program in a Polish global radio Nasze Radio USA, where she interviews both new and famous artists of Polish orgin and updates Polish community on what's happening in NYC's culture and entertainment (Thursdays 6:15pm ET).
She is an advocate for underrepresented groups, especially LGBTQIA+ (her own) and had contributed over the pandemic to non-profit organizations within New York community by taking part in Ripple For Change Award. Among others, she had collaborated in raising over $2000 for Black Theatre Network and Ali Forney Center through online theatre.
In 2020 she also collaborated with The How Theatre Company again by joining the ensemble for Emergence Residency awarded by Culture Lab LIC. She was performing in "5-hour piece" directed by Polina Ionina, and then stage designed and assisted in directing the next show "My Favorite Person" which received a grant from New York Foundation of Arts and performed as part of NYC Cultural Affairs initiative to revive live arts in the city.
Weronika was also part of a workshop for "Ideologix" a bilingual play written by Eri Nox, a collaboration between Playmachine and Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Poland. The play's first iteration happened online in mid-2021, and then traveled to Cracow. For the Polish iteration of this show in November she jumped on the team remotely as a dialect coach and cultural consultant.
In October 2021 she was back on stage with live audience for the first time at the re-opening of The Seeing Place Theater. Once again but this time in person she recreated her role as Willow in reading of "Queer Witch Conspiracy".
She is currently represented by MMG talent management.