afael de Acha has directed over one hundred productions of plays by contemporary playwrights, Shakespeare, American classics and European works, some in his own translations. He co-founded New Theatre in 1986 in Coral Gables (Miami-Dade) Florida along with his wife, Kimberly Daniel de Acha, leading the company for twenty seasons, where he provided an artistic home for countless artists who worked at New Theatre as a multi-ethnic company from 1986 through 2006, and where he championed the work of American playwrights, producing and directing forty world premieres. De Acha arranged the residence of playwright Nilo Cruz in 2003 at New Theatre. That, in turn, led to the commissioning, writing, and production of Anna in the Tropics. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that year, as well as the American Theatre Critics’ Steinberg Prize for Best American Play that same year.

An important aspect of his twenty-season tenure with that organization - and a source of personal pride - was his having secured funding from the National Endowment for the Arts for ten consecutive years. This made New Theatre one of very few arts organizations in South Florida and one of a handful in the State to be so funded. Other funding obtained by him during his tenure as executive director and principal grant-writer for the organization included major grants from the Knight Foundation, Theatre Communications Group, and American Express Foundation. His fund raising efforts brought in over five million dollars during his tenure, leaving the organization in a fiscally-sound state at the time he stepped down in 2006. De Acha has also had extensive hands-on experience supervising the areas of marketing and advertising in non-profit arts organizations.

A multi-lingual trained musician, he has also staged many operatic productions throughout the country and abroad, including the American stage premieres of operas by Handel and Mozart for Boston's New England Chamber Opera Group, which he founded while still a graduate student at the New England Conservatory of Music. After graduation he received a fellowship from the now-defunct National Opera Institute to join staging staff of the New York City Opera for one season (1973-1974), during which he worked as assistant director to Gian Carlo Menotti on his opera The Consul, Gerald Freedman on Ginastera's Beatrix Cenci, to Jack Edelman on Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, and in several assignments in the company's repertory, including Carmen, Rigoletto, and The Barber of Seville.

From 1976 to 1985 Rafael de Acha worked on board passenger cruise ships. These included major liners of Norwegian America Cruises, Royal Viking, Paquet Croissieres, and Pearl Cruises of Scandinavia. At first as member of the cruise staff, and later as cruise director, de Acha traveled to over 130 countries all over the world, spending the years 1981 to 1983 primarily in the Far East, where he led the first visits of a passenger ship to the People's Republic of China. As Executive Cruise Director of the S.S. Pearl of Scandinavia from its maiden voyage, de Acha put in place all shipboard entertainment, sports, lectures, publications, and all other public relations activities. He facilitated guest lectures by noted speakers, as well as appearances by artists from China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

De Acha has received Lifetime Achievement awards from The Dade County Cultural Alliance, Phi Kappa Phi, The Miami Arts Exchange, the Hispanic Theatre Festival, the Theatre League of South Florida and the Miami-Dade County School Board. The Miami Herald, Miami New Times and the Sun-Sentinel have repeatedly named his productions among the year's best. He has served as a panelist for Dade County's Department of Cultural Affairs, the State of Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs, Theatre Communications Group, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also been the recipient of several Carbonell Awards and multiple nominations for Best Direction and Best Production.