Gina Sandi-Diaz

Gina Sandí-Díaz is a PhD candidate and GTA at the University of Kansas.  She is also an actor, director and Applied Theatre facilitator. She taught Play Directing, Theatre History and Introduction to Theatre Theory at Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica, where she also co-founded the Applied Theatre Program and conducted processes in rural communities and social welfare institutions. As an actress, she co-founded the independent theatre troupe Colectivo Panthera Onca and collaborated with companies such as Teatro 50 al Sur; Símbolo Compañia Escénica; and Signos Teatro Danza.

At the University of Kansas she teaches THR Acting 106 and has been a GTA for THR 380 Hip-Hop and Popular Culture.  She is a member of the Interactive Theatre Troupe (ITT) and served as Assistant Director for the productions of Much Ado About Nothing (2014) and Comedy of Errors(2014). She adapted and directed a short story by Gabriel García Márquez, Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon (2014) for the Kansas Classical Repertory Theatre Summer Season (2014), and co-directed with Rachel Blackburn The Last Cyclist (2014), an adaptation by Naomi Patz of the original script written at the Terezín concentration camp in the Czech Republic during World World II. 

She is currently working on her dissertation: Performing Cultural Memory, Civic Resistance and National Identity in Costa Rica’s Mask Traditions​, scheduled to defend in Spring 2017. Her areas of interest and research are Performance Studies, Latin American Theatre, Theatre for Social Change; Theatre for Peacebuilding, Applied Theatre and Latin@ Theatre in the US.