David John Chávez (he/him/his) has been a South Bay Area-based theatre critic/reporter since 2009, and a journalist, theatre educator and director since 1990, having been a reporter and theatre/music critic for the Fresno Bee. His work has been featured nationally in American Theatre Magazine, TheaterMania and Quill Magazine (A Society of Professional Journalists publication) and regionally in Theatre Bay Area , KQED, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Mercury News/East Bay Times., where he serves as the South Bay’s regular theatre critic. He is also part of an LLC called Substrate Arts Magazine, along with other Bay Area arts and culture writers, where he writes long-form, non-theatre pieces.

He is the current executive chair of the the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA), elected to a three-year executive committee term in 2019 and was named Chair of the organization in July of 2021. He is also the co-chair of ATCA’s Belonging, Equity, Inclusion & Diversity (BEID) Committee, a group working on national initiatives to diversify criticism and expand cultural literacy to journalists of the American theatre.

David was selected by the Pulitzer Prizes to serve as one of five jurors for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, (Winner – “Fat Ham” by James Ijames) and was invited to serve again a year later, this time fulfilling the role of jury chair for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Winner – “English” by Sanaz Toossi).

David has a B.A. in Theatre Arts from California State University, Fresno, a Master’s degree in directing from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University and a Master’s degree in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University. In the summer of 2020, he was selected for a fellowship to the National Critics Institute through the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT.

When not watching or writing about theatre and the arts, he is an avid sports fan for the Bay’s pro teams, including the Golden State Warriors, San Jose Earthquakes, San Jose Sharks and his alma mater Fresno State Bulldogs.

Send him an email at theatrechavez@gmail.com or follow him on twitter. Also check out his “By David John Chavez” Facebook page.