Who we are: Board Members
Matthew Travisano
Matthew Travisano is an educator and theater artist based in San Francisco. He is currently on the faculty of Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, the visual and performing arts high school of the San Francisco Unified School District. There he has served as chair of the Theatre Department as a member of the English Department faculty. Before that, he spent nearly a decade at Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) where he was on the faculties of the Theatre, English, and Social Science departments. He went on to chair the Theatre Department and, in that role, developed an artistic and educational collaboration with Crowded Fire Theatre. This culminated in co-producing the Bay Area premiere of Young Jean Lee’s Church with Crowded Fire in 2018. He also co-produced and collaborated on productions and programming with Cal Performances and Saint Mary’s College of California. While at OSA, he was the recipient of the Exploring the Legacy of Race and Ethnicity in California grant from CalHumanities for his creation of a world premiere version of The Oresteia and public programming that accompanied the production and which sought to lower gates to theater attendance and participation. He was OSA’s third Artistic Director and first Career Technical Education coordinator, facilitating arts instruction, programming, and collaborations with local arts and community organizations. In addition to training young theater artists, Matthew is also an actor and director in his own right who has worked with various theater companies throughout the Bay Area for over two decades. Before his career in education he was a staff accountant with a leading advertising agency based in San Francisco. He earned his B.A. in English from UC Berkeley with a focus on medieval poetry and poetics generally. He earned a Master’s in Teaching (MAT) from San Diego State University with a focus on secondary education. He lives in San Francisco with his husband Wade.
