A more than six-decade-old performing arts institution on the Central Coast has a new artistic director. Valeria Rachelle has been named Artistic Director of Allan Hancock College’s Pacific Conservatory Theater, or PCPA.
Rachelle has spent nearly three decades producing and directing at theaters and universities across the county. She was a part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Syracuse Opera, and she taught at USC. It’s a return to PCPA for Rachelle, who was an actor and an instructor with the program.
Rachelle fills the vacancy created by the retirement of longtime Artistic Director and dean Mark Booher, who is stepping down after 27 years with PCPA.
The organization is best known by the public for musicals and plays it stages in Santa Maria and Solvang. But PCPA has provided generations of actors and behind-the-scenes theater crew members with hands-on experience to prepare them for careers in the field.
