Xiomara Cornejo

Dr. Xiomara Cornejo (she/her/ella) is a Salvadoran American theatre director, award-winning playwright, award-winning dramaturg, award-winning designer, and award-winning educator from Compton, California. Some of her most recent theatre credits include Cebollas (DCPA), every.single.one (Studio Four), Alma (Colorado New Play Summit), and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot (MOLAA). Her professional work includes theatre for social change, community organizing, directing, design, and after-school arts programming. Xiomara apprenticed with the legendary Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont and was a member of the Occupy Movement Arts Committee in Long Beach, CA., where she utilized Theatre of the Oppressed and puppet making to mobilize communities. Xiomara worked as a community organizer/supervisor under the Asset Based Community Development and Relationship-Based Community Organizing model and facilitated Neighborhood Action Councils with youth and adults throughout South Los Angeles. Xiomara’s scholarship centers on protest and radical theatre of the Americas, political puppetry, and circus.

• Directing
• Theatre of the oppressed
• Autoethnography
• Ethnodrama
• Theatre history

• Protest & street theatre
• Radical theatre history of the americas
• Political puppetry
• Circus

• University of Missouri-Columbia, PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies, 2021
• University of Southern California, MA in Public Art Studies, 2008
• California State University Long Beach, BA in Theatre Directing and Performance, 2006

• Assistant Professor of Theatre, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Postdoctoral Research Assistant, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Associate Director, The Center for Applied Theatre and Drama Research, University of Missouri
• Supervisor of Community Organizing, SBCC Thrive LA
• Community Organizer/Artist in Residence, Human Services Association, Bell CA

• National Partners of the American Theatre, "Outstanding Play Award," 2022
• Mellon ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow, 2020
• Green Chalk Teaching Assistant Award, 2020
• John F. Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) National 1st Place Winner – Dramaturgy, 2018
• KCACTF National 1st Place Winner – Projection design, 2017