David Melendez

David is a former US Navy submarine mechanic, UCLA Bruin, and Ph.D candidate in Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota. His areas of interest are Theatre Historiography, Chicana/o History, and Indigenous Performance Research. He has taught classes on Chicanx music, art, Barrio culture, and service-learning with Latinx community organizations in the Twin Cities as an instructor for the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies. Mentored by the artistic and administrative leadership of Penumbra Theatre Company as the 2018-2019 August Wilson Fellow, David supports local theatre artists, educators, community organizers, and youth whose work centers the needs, challenges, and desires of historically marginalized and presently vulnerable communities in the Twin Cities. He sits on Mixed Blood Theatre’s Latino Advisory Council, the advisory board for the Alliance of Latinx Minnesota Artists (ALMA), teaches for Penumbra Summer Institute, and plays son jarocho music with the MN Jaraneros in partnership with El Colegio High School. Currently, he is working with Theatre Novi Most as a dramaturg for Denim, a new play that uses the forms of historical pageantry, tableau vivant, and melodrama to investigate the mythology of the American character, and is a 2019 MN Artists writer in residence.