Associate Professor of Acting and Directing Gil Gonzalez has officially stepped into the role of Chair of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Region VIII. He assumes this role after completing a three-year term as Vice Chair of the Region. This position provides the artistic direction and leadership for the annual Region VIII festival, most recently held on the campus of the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawaii. At the festival, more 1,100 college students, faculty, and staff participated in workshops, productions, auditions, design expositions, and more over the four-day theatre festival. Gonzalez, along with the Region VIII Governing Board, will be responsible for the programming and development of Festivals 49, 50, and 51.
Started in 1969, the Kennedy Center's founding chairman, the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) is a national theater program involving 18,000 students from colleges and universities nationwide which has served as a catalyst in improving the quality of college theater in the United States.
Gonzalez also serves as Whittier College's chair for the department of theatre and communication arts as well as the associate dean of First Year Experience. He holds an MFA in acting from the University of Virginia, and earned a B.A. while a double major in dramatic arts and history at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside.
