Israel López Reyes

Israel López Reyes is an artist based in Los Angeles working as an actor, writer, director, and producer in multicultural and international environments. He was born and raised in LA with his parents who immigrated to the United States from the region of Michoacán and Guanajuato, México. Growing up, Israel's mother worked as an educator while his father worked as a machinist. He spent most of his early years moving between South Gate and Riverside, California and was introduced to acting when he attended Downey High School. He earned his undergraduate degree in English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas (2013). Upon finishing his studies at SMU, he went on to attain his MFA in Acting at the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television (2016) where he worked extensively as an interdisciplinary artist. During his graduate tenure, Israel was selected for a research fellowship with Google for his work in the field of performance and technology; he was the recipient of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Scholarship Award, as well as the Jack Nicholson Prize in Acting. Mr. López Reyes was also awarded the Mickey Dude Fellowship for the Depiction of Ethnic Diversity in American Life for his original works for the stage . Immediately after graduating from UCLA, Israel was cast in the role of a young film director named Anthony Floyd Corrado in Francis Ford Coppola's project 'Distant Vision' (2016). He has performed in professional regional theater across the country including The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, The Guthrie Theater, Center Theatre Group, Mixed Blood Theatre, Boise Contemporary Theater, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Mr. López Reyes is the co-artistic director of the southland company and in 2017 became a visiting writer with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Black Swan Lab. In 2019, his work was developed at the LATC with the Latino Theater Company as part of their Summer on a Spring Play Festival sponsored by NBC Universal/Telemundo. In addition to acting, Israel strives to work on behalf of immigrants such as his parents and his extended family. He has played drums in various indie-rock bands, and enjoys running the LA marathon.