CSUSM welcomes Kaja Dunn and Victor Contreras

By Jessie Gambrell

Staff Writer

This 2012 fall semester has brought two new faces to CSUSM’s theater department. Kaja Dunn and Victor Contreras come to campus to bring new and exciting flavors to our theater program.

Merryl Goldberg, director of the Visual and Performing Arts Department, is excited for these new Cougar professors to bring something different and interesting to the theater program.

Professor Kaja Dunn has been acting for 14 years and has 12 years in education. She also directs theater, having just co-directed CSUSM play festival. She has experience in teaching for Playwrights Project and Young Audiences.

Some of her credits include: “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” “One for the Road,” “The Vagina Monologues” inWest Los Angelesand” A Raisin in the Sun.” “I plan on staying here as long as I can. The classes are enthusiastic and there is a great energy on campus. The people are really great to work with here,” Dunn said.

Professor Victor Contreras started teaching theater and speech in 1974 in the Sweetwater school district, which had the first “Fame” style school on the West Coast. In the late 1980s, he decided to pack up his bags and move from his nativeSan Diegoto the mecca of theater,Los Angeles.

There he got involved in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and became the artistic director for Nosotros Theater.

“Well I was very honored to be asked to come here, to replace Marcos Martinez. I wasn’t aware of the opening here,” Contreras said.

Professor Dunn will be teaching TA 300 Theater for Social Change and TA 120 Intro to Theater. And professor Contreras will be teaching Chicano and Latino Theater, 325 Chicano/Latino Theater in theU.S.For questions about these new theater professors or the Arts department you can visit www.csusm.edu/vpa.