Special Topic
Margareta Sörenson is a theatre and dance critic based in Stockholm, Sweden. A former president of the International Association of Theatre Critics, her orientation is toward multidisciplinary stage arts such as contemporary dance, circus, animation theatre, and the influence of classical Asian performing arts in European culture. She has published books on theatre, puppetry, children’s culture, and dance, including her 2011 book on Mats Ek and her latest book Marionette Theatre, 60 Years and More (2020). She has been a lecturer on the traditions of puppetry in Finland (Turku School of Arts and Communication) and Sweden (Dramatic Instritute and Luleå University of Technology, Stockholm), holds an MA from Stockholm University in dance studies, and lectures on dance history and aesthetics. She is a member of the Research Commission of UNIMA, the international association for puppetry.
Steriani Tsintziloni is Assistant Professor of Dance Studies at the Department of Theatre Studies (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens). Having a dance background, Steriani combines academic research, curation, and artistic projects. She has taught at the University of Patras, the Hellenic Open University, the Dance School of the Greek National Opera and the State School of Dance. She was the Dance Curator for the Athens Festival (2016-2019). She was a Visiting Artist at the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University (CHS Washington 2020-21), and a finalist for the British Council Alumni Awards Greece 2024. Her monograph Under the shadow of the Parthenon. Dance at the Athens Festival of the Cold War (1955-1966) was published by Kapa Publishing and was short-listed for the 2023 State Literary Awards.
Interviews, Inter/National Reflections
Savas Patsalidis is Professor Emeritus in Theatre Studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he has taught at the School of English for close to 35 years. He has also taught at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece, the Hellenic Open University and the graduate program of the Theatre Department of 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. In 2019 his book Theatre & Theory II: About Topoi, Utopias and Heterotopias was published by University Studio Press. In 2022 his book-length study Comedy’s Encomium: The Seriousness of Laughter, was also published by University Studio Press. In addition to his academic activities, he writes theatre reviews for various journals. He is on the Executive Committee of the Hellenic Association of Theatre and Performing Arts Critics, a member of the curators’ team of Forest International 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.
Essays
Yana Meerzon is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Ottawa. With four single authored books and nine co-edited collections, most recently Performing Nationalism in Russia (Cambridge UPress, 2024) and Palgrave Handbook on Theatre and Migration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023; with Steve Wilmer), Professor Yana Meerzon, specializes in theoretical approaches to contemporary performance and dramaturgy, questions of displacement, multilingualism, and identity politics. For the past two decades, Professor Meerzon has been studying theatrical representations of migration created by migrant artists in Europe and North America. With the rise of political populism, religious fundamentalism, and nationalism, she turned to the issues of borders and politics of nation building, within which today’s practices and discussions of global migration take place. A former President of Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR, 2020-2022), Meerzon is a co-editor of the journal Critical Stages, published by International Association of Theatre Critics, and also is a co-editor of the book series Palgrave Studies in Performance and Migration (with Steve Wilmer).
Performance Reviews
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.
Book Reviews
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 trustee of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship and President of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (doubtaboutwill.org).