OTHER PUBLICATIONS ON THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE
A LIGHT STORY
In Theatre Things: Material Theories and Histories, edited by Eero Laine and Andrew Friedman, University of Michigan Press.
Light makes worlds collapse and transform just as much as it mediates distant realities by way of its transit. Indeed, as Katherine Graham explains “the primary purpose of light in performance is not quite to provide visibility, as is often thought, but to provide the possibility for a mediated visibility” and that therefore the “dramaturgical significance of this mediated visibility lies, primarily, in the ability of light to structure moments in performance.” But can we really say that the mediating processes of light occur only in performance or that they only affect the experiences of the people gathered in the theatre? Where does light stop being of the theatre if all light on this planet is merely passing by? Light is always coming from and escaping to the beyond—it is always here and there, hither and thither, present and gone.
Forthcoming 2024.
STRANGER THAN KINDNESS: CRISES OF CARE AND PERFORMANCE RESEARCH’ (co-authored with Kristof van Baarle and Helena Grehan),
In Performance Research, 27:6-7 (2022), 1-4
In the wake of the pandemic, and now immersed in global financial and ecological and military crises that persist, what is the relational paradigm that we are instituting in performance research? How are we, through our work, caring for the humans and non-humans who are implicated in performance research? How are we caring and being cared for in our teaching, making and writing? Whose nest are we building? How are we nesting a common sense of care in performance research? We hope that the contributions to this volume, both individually and as a collection, ignite these questions further and provoke larger conversations in and beyond our field and its adjacent communities.
THEATRE AND ESCHATOLOGICAL POLITICS
In The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics. Edited by Peter Eckersall and Helena Grehan. Routledge, 2019.
In a historical moment where quasi-medieval religious narratives sustain an identity politics anchored by violent and chaotic nationalisms (with the US and the Caliphate as only two exemplars), what are the eschatological politics of the world today? Who are the self-proclaimed owners of the end of time and of the final judgement? How are those ends being enacted and contested (or not) in theatre and performance?
BOOK REVIEW
Theatre and Music in Manila and the Asia Pacific, 1869-1946 Sounding Modernities by meLê yamomo
In European Journal of Theatre and Performance 1:1 (2019).
As a Mexican living in Singapore, I resonated with several passages of the book. I hummed to the tune of its politics and sang its leitmotifs. Perhaps then, even when the connections between embodiment and the soni of modernity are not as crystalized as the rest of the book, it might be that in these tiny resonances that the intent of yamomo’s argument hits home for those who, like me (and maybe yamomo as well), are invested in the endeavour of de-centring and re-writing the colonial histories of how people, including scholars, from the “periphery” should sound, look, and be like.
ON SILENCE, SINGAPORE MALAYS AND JACQUES RANCIÈRE
Performance Philosophy, 2:2 (2017) pp. 310-330.
This article stages the silent adventure of watching theatre about Singapore Malays and reading Jacques Rancière in Singapore. The argument blurs the real and the fictional, the voice of the author with the voice of the spectator, Rancière’s voice with the silence of Maya Raisha, a Malay-Muslim girl.
POST-GLOBAL ISLAM: REFLECTION INSPIRED BY PROJECT IMAM HUSSEIN (2007-2012)
Investigación Teatral, 3:5 (2014) pp.79-9. (In Spanish).
This article is a reflection on the practice-based research project Imam Hussein (2007 – 2012). The argument discusses the intercultural negotiations with Shi'ite jurisprudence that informed the creative process.
IS THERE INTERCULTURAL PRACTICE IN MEXICAN THEATRE?
PasodeGato, Revista Mexicana de Teatro. Jan-March 2013 (In Spanish)
While in English-speaking academia intercultural performance has been widely-discussed in the last thirty years, the focus of discussions have predominantly look at the ways in which North American and European theatricalities have been influenced by African, Middle eastern and Asian theatricalities, and viceversa. With only few exemptions, the intercultural matrix of Latin America in general, and of Mexico in specific, has gone unnoticed by critical and academic attention. Mexican theatre is intercultural by definition.
ARTSEQUATOR
I am a regular contributor to the online magazine ArtsEquator. Based in Singapore, ArtsEquator publishes about film, art and performance in Southeast Asia.
Southernmost: The Politics of Nowhereness. Performance review. December 2018.
Review of Excavations, Interrogations, Krishen Jit & Contemporary Malaysian Theatre. Book review. September 2018.
And So You See… The Irrational is in the Eye of the Beholder. Performance review. September 2017.
Scenes First; Transitions Later. Special contribution May 2017.
Tropicana, The Musical: Memory Malfunction. Performance review. April 2017.
