Mr. Leo Arteche Arencibia
MA in Theatre from the University of Central Florida
BA from New York University
Leo Arteche Arencibia is entering his sixteenth year as Theatre Director at Miami Arts Charter School, where he has spent his career building one of the top theatre programs in the state of Florida.
A New York native raised in South Florida, Mr. Arteche's love of theatre took root early — as a community theatre performer, and as the founder and president of his high school's Thespian troupe at The Sagemont School, where he graduated as valedictorian in 2007 and was recognized as a Silver Knight Honorable Mention in Drama. He went on to earn his Bachelor's degree from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study — where he was both a Dean's Scholar and a Presidential Honors Scholar — and his Master's in Theatre, with a concentration in Musical Theatre, from the University of Central Florida. He holds dual certifications in Drama and is a member of the Florida Association for Theatre Educators and the Educational Theatre Association.
At MAC, Mr. Arteche teaches across all disciplines of the theatre arts — acting, musical theatre, and technical theatre — and directs one mainstage production every year. This year, he will be leading all advanced courses of the high school theatre program. He also serves as Troupe Director of award-winning Thespian Troupe 7590, and this fall will direct The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Previous credits include Little Shop of Horrors, Mamma Mia!, Into the Woods, Legally Blonde, Chicago, and The Drowsy Chaperone — seasons that reflect the talent, ambition, and versatility of the students who bring them to life.
The program's competitive record is a testament to what students can achieve when they are held to genuinely high standards and trusted to meet them. Under Mr. Arteche's direction, MAC students have earned 80 Critics Choices and Top Honors, 413 Superior ratings, and 25 Senior Scholarships at the Florida Thespian District and State Festivals. Beyond the festival stage, students have earned national recognition through YoungArts, the Silver Knight Awards, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Initiative, and the Carbonell Scholarship Awards — three of the past five Miami Carbonell Scholarship Award winners have been Mr. Arteche's students. Many alumni have gone on to professional careers in theatre, film, television, and on Broadway and in Hollywood.
In 2025, Mr. Arteche was among a select group of South Florida theatre educators invited to serve on the founding panel that brought the Arshties to Miami — the region's own high school musical theatre awards, developed in partnership with the Adrienne Arsht Center, and a pathway to the national Jimmy Awards. In the Arshties' inaugural season, MAC's production of In the Heights received three nominations.
For Mr. Arteche, the work has always been about more than theatre. A rigorous, competitive program builds real tools — discipline, collaboration, resilience, creative problem-solving — that students carry with them long after graduation, into whatever lives they go on to build. He has chosen to build his career at MAC because he believes in this school's vision, this community, and these students, and because the legacy he has worked to create belongs as much to them as it does to him.
"We're not just a troupe, we're a family" — Troupe 7590's motto, now instantly recognizable emblazoned across the back of troupe shirts at competitions across Florida — has been Mr. Arteche's guiding principle from the start, and the foundation on which everything else has been built over the past fifteen years.
