Host Bio

TONY MATA is the head of the BFA program in Music Theatre at the University of Florida. Professor Mata holds an MFA in Music Theatre from San Diego State University and has directed, choreographed, and performed in over 150 plays, musicals, operas and cabarets in New York, Off-Broadway, and in regional theatre, . Regional credits include The Kennedy Center, the Old Globe Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars, Stages Repertory, San Diego Opera, The Houston and San Diego Gilbert and Sullivan Companies, and Lambs Players. In New York, he has worked with the once renowned Circle Repertory Theatre, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, The Lincoln Center Summer Festival, New Dramatists, Riverside Shakespeare, and the Obie Award-winning Repertorio Español.

He is a member of Actors Equity, the American Guild of Musical Artists, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, the Association of Theatre and Higher Education, and the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors and Directors. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Center for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Florida and is also on the graduate faculty in the School of Theatre and Dance. He has worked with such notable names as Cab Calloway, Julie Harris, Brian Bedford, Ken Page, Dudley Moore, Colleen Dewhurst, Zoe Caldwell, Chita Rivera and Savion Glover.

Professor Mata was the recipient of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation 1992 Directing Fellowship in New York, and his critically acclaimed off-Broadway production of Garcia Lorca's The Evil Spell of the Butterfly was nominated for five ACE awards and won two, including Best Production. For three seasons, Professor Mata was also the Managing Artistic Director of Central Ohio's leading and oldest professional summer theatre, Weathervane Playhouse.