I am a performance studies scholar who is Director of School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. From 2019-2024, I was also the Director of SFU’s Institute for Performance Studies and the founding editor of the peer-reviewed open access journal Performance Matters. My research investigates the time- and place-based relationships between audience and event across a range of aesthetic practices (including dance, theatre, film, and performance art) and social formations (from same-sex marriage to civic branding and public memorials to urban mega-events).

I am the author, editor, or co-editor of fifteen books and special journal issues, including: World Stages, Local Audiences: Essays on Performance, Place and Politics (2010); Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice (2014); Mega-Event Cities: Art/Audiences/Aftermaths (2016); and Q2Q: Queer Canadian Theatre and Performance (2018), winner of the Patrick O'Neil Award from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. My most recent book is My Vancouver Dance History: Story, Movement, Community (2020), a performance ethnography of my collaborations (as a writer, researcher, facilitator, outside eye, co-creator, and occasional mover) with several Vancouver-based dance artists and companies. It received Honourable Mention for the 2022 Ann Saddlemyer Award from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research.

My essays have appeared in Dance Research Journal, Modern Drama, Screen, TDR: The Drama Review, Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre Journal, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, Theatre Survey, CinéAction, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, as well as numerous other journals and edited collections. An Associate Member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, from 2002-2019 I additionally taught in SFU's Department of English.

Also a playwright, productions of my work include The Objecthood of Chairs (SFU Woodward’s, 2010), Positive ID (Berkeley Theatre, Toronto, 2012), Long Division [Part 1 / Part 2] (Pi Theatre, 2016/17), and The Bathers (excerpt, Zee Zee Theatre, 2017). My most recent play, At the Speed of Light, is an audio drama that was produced by Pi Theatre and streamed on SoundCloud in March and April, 2022. Between 2008 and 2018 I regularly documented Vancouver performance practice at performanceplacepolitics.blogspot.ca.

I supervise MA, MFA, and PhD students across the broad spectrum of performance creation and performance studies.

EDUCATION
  • Ph.D., University of British Columbia, 1997
  • M.A., University of British Columbia, 1993
  • B.A. (Honours), University of Toronto, 1990