CS Issue No 25 Editors

Sebastian X Samur is a performer and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. His primary research interest is actor training and he is currently studying the role rhythm plays in performance, examining the work of SITI Company, Dairakudakan and Mime Omnibus, as well as the impact of digital technologies. His writing can be found in Modern Drama, Theatre Research in Canada, Asian Theatre Journal, Canadian Theatre Review, Stanislavski Studies, and Jeu, among other publications. 

Savas Patsalidis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece. 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. He has just finished a book on comedy (Comedy’s Encomium) which will be published in 2022 by University Studio Press. In addition to his academic activities, he writes theatre reviews for various ejournals. 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.

Kasia Lech, with a PhD from University College Dublin, is a scholar, actor, storyteller, puppeteer and Senior Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University. Her research and creative practice explore theatre through practice-based and traditional scholarship and primarily focus on theatre in the context of multilingualism, verse and transnational experience. She published Dramaturgy of Form: Performing Verse in Contemporary Theatre (Routledge, 2021). Her second book Multilingual Dramaturgies: Towards New European Theatre is forthcoming with Palgrave. Kasia performed internationally and co-founded Polish Theatre Ireland—a multilingual theatre company based in Dublin. She is an Executive Director at TheTheatreTimes.com.