CS Issue No 23 Editors

Gigi Argyropoulou (PhD Roehampton University, MA Dartington College of Art) is a researcher, theorist, director, dramaturg and curator working in the fields of performance and cultural practice. Gigi has co-initiated and organised research events, public programmes, interventions, festivals, conferences, performances, actions and cultural projects both inside and outside institutions. She is a founding member of EIGHT(Critical institute for arts and politics), DIY Performance Biennial, Green Park, Mavili Collective, Institute for Live Arts Research and F2/Mkultra. She has taught at Universities in postgraduate and undergraduate programmes in UK and Europe. Gigi received the Routledge Prize for PSi 18 and Dwight Conquergood Award in 2017. Gigi is co-editor of the special issue of Performance Research “On Institutions” and publishes regularly in journals, books and magazines. Currently, Gigi is member of the curatorial and editorial board of HKW’s New Alphabet School and co-curating the upcoming edition ‘On Instituting’.

Stefanie Sachsenmaier (PhD Middlesex University, DEA Sorbonne Nlle, MA Goldsmiths, SFHEA) is Associate Professor in Contemporary Performance at Middlesex University and Programme Leader of BA Theatre Performance and Production. Her research centres on the processual in creative practice, with a particular interest in the ways that performance practices extend into the socio-political context. She co-edited Collaboration in Performance Practice: Premises, Workings and Failures, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, sits on the editorial board for Choreographic Practices Journal and forms part of the editorial team for Interventions (Contemporary Theatre Review). She published a series of writings related to her long-term research with British choreographer Rosemary Butcher, as well as on questions concerning cross-cultural collaborations. She recently co-facilitated a conversation series entitled ‘Performing Solidarity’ and co-runs the ‘Politicised Artistic Practices Research Initiative’ at the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at Middlesex University. Her co-edited special issue of Performance Research ‘On Solidarity’ is forthcoming in 2022. She has a background as a performer and is an experienced practitioner of Wu Style tai chi chuan. 

Savas Patsalidis, Professor of theatre and performance history and theory in the School of English (Aristotle University, Thessaloniki), the Hellenic Open University and the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece. He is also a regular lecturer on the Graduate Programme of the Theatre Department at Aristotle University. He is the author of fourteen books on theatre and performance criticism/theory and co-editor of another thirteen. His two-volume study, Theatre, Society, Nation (2010), was awarded first prize for best theatre study of the year. His latest book-length study Theatre & Theory II: About Topoi, Utopias and Heterotopias was published in 2019 by University Studio Press. In addition to his academic activities, he writes theatre reviews for the ejournals parallaxi and thegreekplay project. He is currently the president of the Hellenic Association of Theatre and Performing Arts Critics, member of the curators’ team of Forest Festival (organized by the National Theatre of Northern Greece) and the editor-in-chief of Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, the journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics.

Yana Meerzon is Professor at the University of Ottawa and President of Canadian Association for Theatre Research. Trained as a professional theatre critic in Moscow, Russia (GITIS), she also holds a PHD from University of Toronto, Canada. Yana is the author of three books, with the latest volume Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism published by Palgrave in August 2020. She co-edited seven collections of articles, including Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture with David Dean and Daniel McNeil (Palgrave 2020). Her current research project is entitled “Between Migration and Neo-Nationalism(s): Performing the European Nation — Playing a Foreigner”; and it has been funded by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Yana is the editor of the “Essays Section” of Critical Stages/Scènes critiques.

Matti Linnavuori wrote theatre criticism between 1978 and 2013 for various newspapers and weeklies in his native Finland. In 1985, he worked for the BBC World Service in London. Since 1998, he has presented papers at numerous IATC events. In the 2000s, he wrote for Teatra Vestnesis in Latvia. Since 1992, he has written and directed several radio plays for YLE the Finnish Broadcasting Company. In March 2016, his play Ta mig till er ledare (Take me to your leader) premiered at Lilla Teatern in Helsinki.

Don Rubin is Managing Editor of Critical Stages/Scènes critiques. He is the General Editor of Routledge’s six-volume World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre and founding Editor of Canada’s national theatre quarterly Canadian Theatre Review. He is Professor Emeritus of Theatre at York University in Toronto and Founding Director and Former Chair of both York’s Department of Theatre and its MA/PhD Program in Theatre and Performance Studies. His volume Canadian Theatre History: Selected Readings is a standard volume on the subject. He is a vice-president and trustee of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship.