Candidate biographies for CATR Elections 2016 

President 

Marlis Schweitzer is an Associate Professor of Theatre at York University. She is the author of When Broadway Was the Runway: Theater, Fashion, and American Culture (2009) and Transatlantic Broadway: The Infrastructural Politics of Global Politics (2015) and co-editor (with Joanne Zerdy) of Performing Objects and Theatrical Things (2014). Her term as Editor of Theatre Research in Canada/ Recherches théâtrales au Canada will conclude in June 2016.

Francophone

Francine Chaîné is professor at École d’art of Université Laval. Her teaching focuses on drama/theatre. Her current research is on the creation process in theatre writing and in teenagers’ drama (SSHRC). She’s the Director of undergraduate Art Education program. She published articles in Quebecois, Canadian, Australian and European reviews.  She is co-director of FRÉA collection at Laval University Press.

Graduate Student

Sasha Kovacs is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto Centre for Theatre, Drama, and Performance Studies completing her dissertation on the performances of E. Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake. She most recently edited the Winter 2015 issue of Canadian Theatre Review on Performance and Human Rights in the Americas. She teaches theatre history at Ryerson Theatre School and dramaturgy at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Sasha also dedicates her time to performance and program creation, working as a core member of the theatre company Ars Mechanica, and acting as Program Director for the community organization Scarborough Arts.

Québec

Erin Hurley is Professor of drama and theatre in the Department of English at McGill University, where her teaching and research focuses on modern Quebec performance, theatre and feeling, performance theory, and feminist and LGBTQ performance. She is currently researching the history of English-language theatre in Quebec from 1945-2015, using oral history and archival research, as part of a multi-university research team.

Yves Jubinville is a full professor in Theatre Studies at l’UQAM. He is a researcher with the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises (CRILCQ); he has published a great number of articles in Québec, France and Canada on theatre history and Quebec contemporary drama. His present research focuses on comparative theatre historiography and the genetics of dramatic writings. He was Director of L’Annuaire théâtral from 2008 to 2014. He is currently Director of l’École supérieure de théâtre at l’UQAM.

Sylvain Lavoie is a candidate in the PhD in Humanities program at Concordia University. Engaging with anthropology and philosophy, his project analyzes the presence of nature in contemporary Canadian theatre. Member of the board of directors of the SQET for many years, Sylvain has worked as a Communications Officer at the NAC, signed critiques in Spirale magazine for now a decade, and coedited Pierre L’Hérault’s writings on theatre (L’assemblée pensante, Nota bene, 2009).

Professor Marie-Josée Plouffe, Ph.D. (Art Studies & Practices, UQAM), has been teaching drama at UQTR since 2007. She is a published author in the Methodology of the Grounded Theory journal: The GT as a contribution to the development of research in Arts (2012). Her current research concerns drama teachers’ knowledge in Quebec’s schools

Alberta and the Territories / Alberta et Territoires

Dr. Patrick Finn is Associate Professor of Drama in The School of Creative and Performing Arts at The University of Calgary. He has degrees in literature and drama and teaches a mix of studio, seminar, and lecture courses. His primary areas of interest are performance and technology, directing, and Canadian Drama and Theatre.

Nicholas Hanson is Associate Professor and Chair of Theatre and Dramatic Arts at the University of Lethbridge. Recent publications on theatre for young people, arts funding, and gender equity have appeared in Canadian Theatre Review, Theatre Research in Canada, and the Theatre and Affect anthology. Nicholas has participated in the administration of the CATR Awards from 2013 to the present.

Members-at-large 

Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) is a Toronto-based theatre practitioner and Assistant Professor with the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies; the Aboriginal Studies Program; and the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto. Her research and praxis base themselves in the mechanics of story creation, the processes of delivery, and the mechanics of affect.

James McKinnon is a Senior Lecturer and Program Director of Theatre Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research interests include adaptation-based dramaturgy, theatre pedagogy, and the reciprocal influence of devised performance and post-secondary theatre institutions. His work appears in TRiC, CTR, In Defense of Theatre, OuterSpeares, and Adapting Chekhov.

Educated in Australia and Canada, Helen Gilbert is Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her publications include several influential books on postcolonial theatre and a co-authored cultural history of orangutans. She is currently working on a monograph exploring indigenous performance in the Americas, Australia, the Pacific and South Africa, as well as a new project on the Anthropocene.

VK Preston is Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University, where she teaches performance historiography (1500-1850) and contemporary political and engaged performance. She recently completed her Ph.D. at Stanford University’s Department of Theater and Performance Studies and SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at McGill. She comes to theatre and performance research from a background in dance.

Dr. Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta is an assistant professor at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. She received her BA and MA in Theatre Studies from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and her Ph.D. in Applied Theatre from The University of Manchester, U.K. Her research interests include theatre in war and (post)-conflict zones, theatre in developing settings, and indigenous theatre. As a theatre practitioner, Sadeghi-Yekta has been involved in projects with different communities and in a variety of countries. She has published in a wide range of international journals and books.