Gustavo Ott has been named the next producing artistic director of GALA Hispanic Theatre. The announcement from the theater’s board of directors decision comes nearly six months after the death of GALA co-founder Hugo Medrano in late May.

Ott, a native of Venezuela, most recently led Teatro Dallas in Texas. Like Medrano, he founded his own theater company, Teatro San Martín de Caracas in Caracas, Venezuela. He led the theater and Fiesta: International Theater Festival as executive artistic director for two decades before arriving in Dallas. 

For 47 years, Medrano and his wife, and GALA co-founder, Rebecca Medrano, guided the Columbia Heights’ theater. Known as the National Center for Latino Performing Arts, GALA has carved out a space in the local and national theater world as a place to preserve, promote, and celebrate Latino arts and culture. The local theater has produced seven of Ott’s plays, including his musical The Return of Eva Perón – Momia en el clóset, which GALA commissioned; it was nominated for the 2009 Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding New Play or Musical. A new production of The Return of Eva Perón, produced by GALA, will premiere next May.

Ott will join GALA and its Executive Director Rebecca Medrano on Jan. 1. 

“I have been very close to GALA since 1991,” Ott says in a press release. “I confess that, with GALA, everything always feels the same as it was with my theater in Caracas: a family, intimate, funny, supportive, but also political, engaging, community driven, like lifelong friends dreaming up meaningful projects, fabricating touching fantasies.”

Ott says the theater’s legacy will continue: “With Rebecca and Abel López [Gala’s interim producing artistic director], I see clearly where I’m headed. And with them, who could doubt it, the eyes of my friend Hugo reminding me that between us there is no meeting that doesn’t end with a smile.”