Guillermo “Yiyo'' Ornelas is a Bay Area-based performer, teaching artist, and arts education advocate. As a queer first-generation Mexican-American, they understand the impact that an arts education can have, especially in vulnerable communities.
Yiyo has worked with local communities to encourage youth and their families to foster creative modes of expression, through the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, the Teatro Project, and JumpStart. They have served as Vice-Chair of the Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area (AEABA) ensuring that arts education is equitable and accessible to all in the community. They currently sit on the board for Aviva Arts, an arts and wellness non-profit with a mission to promote growth and transformation through liberating art modalities. Before coming to the Bay Area, they led a weekly theater workshop at Our House, a runaway and homeless youth shelter in Redlands, California.
As an actor, Yiyo has performed, notably at the Magic Theater (The Travelers, 2023; Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad 2024), Los Angeles Theater Company (The Travelers, 2023), and Brava Theater (Translating Selena, 2020). They have worked with various theater companies to support the creation of new work, including Campo Santo, Fuse Theater, Aviva Arts, and Tradicion Peruana Cultural Center. Since 2019 they have been a dancer with the Afro-Peruvian performance company Jaranon y Bochinche, participating in the Peninsula's Ethnic Dance Festival in 2022 and various other presentations throughout the Bay Area. In 2022, Yiyo received grant funding from the San Francisco Arts Commission to support the production of 'Fantasmitas: Cinco Sueños Regresando al Sur' by Oz Jimenez, which will have it's national premiere in August 2024.
Yiyo holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley, double majoring in Sociology, Theatre & Performance Studies; where they received the Mark Goodson award for ‘Distinguished Artistic Talent.’
They are a theater nerd who enjoys watching Digimon, Survivor, and Yu-gi-oh! in between attending YouTube University.
