Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez is an Assistant Professor of Theater/Cinema at Los Angeles Mission College, he was born and raised in the community of Watts. He has built a career around using theater as a way of exploring issues of social inequality as well as self-empowerment. His study of theatre has taken him all over the Americas and to the Caribbean.
Through a Cornerstone Theater Company residency Guillermo was able to attend the University of Utah (U of U). There he excelled both academically and artistically. Academic achievements include becoming a National Hispanic Scholar, and earning a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the U of U’s conservatory Actors Training Program. He holds the distinction of being the first Chicana/o ever to star in a production at the University of Utah.
Upon graduating from the U of U, Guillermo attended the MFA program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), where he collaborated with some of the most influential theater practitioners in the nation including Athol Fugard, Michael Greif, and Les Waters. While at UCSD he devised a plan to study political theater in Cuba in the summer of 2001 and collaborated with a Havana based theatre group Margenes del rio.
Over his 7-year tenure as Artistic Director of Watts Village Theater Company, the company received the American Theater Wing Award for being “one of the top 10 most promising small companies in America.” Some of his directorial and literary highlights include two commissions from Center Theatre Group to write student Discovery Guides for En Un Sol Amarillo and Culture Clashes’ Palestine, New Mexico. He has a long history of developing devised and ensemble work as a second generation Joint Stock practitioner, both in a community and professional setting. He is the proud creator of Meet Me @Metro an innovative, interdisciplinary performance festival in its third year of performance on and around the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority rail system.
