Keren Zaiontz

B.A. (York University)

M.A., PhD (University of Toronto)

Keren Zaiontz is Assistant Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in Creative Industries in the Global City in the Department of Film and Media and Cultural Studies Graduate Program. She teaches interdisciplinary courses on cultural and performance studies, critical creative industries, cinematic urbanism, and media and performance. Her research examines the cultural politics of contemporary art and performance and includes work on participatory modes of spectatorship, art activism, experimental disability arts, and the production of urban festivals and mega-events. She is author of Theatre & Festivals (Red Globe Press, 2018), part of the Theatre & series. The book explores the ways in which cultural performances of resistance that have their basis in festivals can migrate to other contexts, making festivals as much the domain of free markets and state power as that of vanguard artists and progressive social movements. Keren is co-editor of numerous special issues and anthologies, most recently, Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: Performance Actions in the Americas with Natalie Alvarez and Claudette Lauzon (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Her articles and interviews have appeared in Canadian Theatre Review, Contemporary Theatre Review, PAJ, Performance Research, PUBLIC, Theatre Journal, Theatre Research in Canada, Theatre Research International and the online journal Imagined Theatres. Keren has been awarded the Performance Studies international Routledge Prize, the Canadian Association for Theatre Research Heather McCallum Award, and the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies Alumni Dissertation Award. She has held a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, and a Banting Fellowship at Simon Fraser University. In 2020, Keren will return to SFU as Research Fellow in the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities Program. During her tenure, she will be a scholar-in-residence at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and undertake research on subaltern mobilities within and beyond Vancouver.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Single-Authored Book

Theatre & Festivals. Theatre& series. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Edited Book Collections

Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: Performance Actions in the Americas. Co-edited with Natalie Alvarez and Claudette Lauzon. Contemporary Performance InterActions Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 

Performing Adaptations: Essays and Conversations on the Theory and Practice of Adaptation. Co-edited with Michelle MacArthur and Lydia Wilkinson. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Reluctant Texts from Exuberant Performance: Canadian Devised Theatre. Co-edited with Bruce Barton, Natalie Corbett, and Birgit Schreyer Duarte. New Canadian Drama series. Ottawa: Borealis Book Publishers, 2008.

Edited Journals, Special Issues

“MEGA-EVENT CITIES: Art, Audiences, Aftermaths.” Co-edited with Peter Dickinson and Kirsty Johnston. Public 53 (Spring 2016).

“Vancouver After 2010.” Co-edited with Peter Dickinson and Kirsty Johnston. Canadian Theatre Review 164 (Fall 2015).

“The Cultural Politics of London 2012.” Co-edited with Jen Harvie. Contemporary Theatre Review 23.4 (November 2013).

Book Chapters and Journal Articles

“From Post-War to ‘Second Wave’: International Performing Arts Festivals.” Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals. Part I: The Big Picture. Ed. Ric Knowles. Cambridge: CUP, forthcoming 2020. 

“On Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: An Introduction.” Co-authored with Natalie Alvarez and Claudette Lauzon. Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: Performance Actions in the Americas. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1-25.

“Performative Conduct for Precarious Times.” Co-authored with Natalie Alvarez. Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: Performance Actions in the Americas. Eds. Alvarez, Lauzon, and Zaiontz. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 41-67.

“Feminist Performance Forensics.” Co-authored with Natalie Alvarez. Contemporary Theatre Review. Special Issue, “Feminist Theatre and Performance.” 28.3 (2018): 285-298.

“Introduction: Mega-event cities: Art/Audiences/Aftermaths.” Co-authored with Peter Dickinson and Kirsty Johnston. PUBLIC 53 (Spring 2016): 5-12.

“Inelastic Olympic Hopefuls: Rhythmic Mis-Interpellation In Three Auditions For The London 2012 Ceremonies.“ Public 53 (Spring 2016): 75-89.   

“Narcissistic Spectatorship in Immersive and One-on-One Performance.” Theatre Journal. Special Issue, “Spectatorship.” 67.3 (2014): 405-425.

“Performing Visions of Governmentality: Care and Capital in 100% Vancouver.” Theatre Research International 39.2 (2014): 101-119.

“Introduction: The Cultural Politics of London 2012.” Special issue, co-authored with Jen Harvie. Contemporary Theatre Review 23.4 (2013): 476-485.

“On the Streets/Within the Stadium: Art for and Against the System in Oppositional Responses to London 2012.” Contemporary Theatre Review 23.4 (2013): 502-518.

“The Right to the Theatre: Belarus Free Theatre’s King Lear.” Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment. Eds. Susan Bennett and Christie Carson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 195-207.

“Ambulatory Audiences and Animate Sites: Staging The Spectator in Site-Specific Performance.” Site-Specific Performance: Politics, Place, Practice. Eds. Joanne Tompkins and Anna Birch. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 167-181.

“Polls and Publics: The Role of Cultural Pluralism in the Imagined Canadian City.” Performance Research. Special Issue, “Performing Publics.” 16.2 (2011): 139-145.

SELECTED NON-REFEERED PUBLICATIONS

Book Chapters and Journal Articles

“Vancouver after 2010: An Introduction.” Special issue, co-authored with Peter Dickinson and Kirsty Johnston. Canadian Theatre Review 164 (Fall 2015): 5-9.

“Public Art in Vancouver and the Civic Infrastructure of Redress.” Co-authored with Dylan Robinson. The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation. Eds. Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and Sophie McCall. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2015. 22-51.

“Human Rights (and their Appearances) in Performing Arts Festivals.” Canadian Theatre Review. Special Issue, “Performance and Human Rights in the Americas.” 161 (Winter 2015): 48-54. 

Interviews

“Protest After Occupy: Rethinking the Repertoires of Left Activism.” Micah White in conversation with Alvarez and Zaiontz. In Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times. Eds. Alvarez, Lauzon, Zaiontz. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 27-40.

“Already – And: The Art of Indigenous Survivance.” Cheryl L’Hirondelle in conversation with Alvarez and Zaiontz. In Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times. Eds. Alvarez, Lauzon, Zaiontz. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 289-302.

“Festival Sites of Curation and Care: An Interview with Joyce Rosario and Deborah Pearson.” Theatre Research in Canada. Special Issue, “Festivals.” (2020): Forum..

“The Festival Performances of Ivo van Hove and Toneelgroep Amsterdam.” Interviews with Wouter van Ransbeek and Ivo van Hove.  Ivo Van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie. Eds. Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. 83-98.

“Public Art as Collective Practice: In Conversation with Neville Gabie.” PUBLIC 53  (June 2016): 105-117. 

“The Aesthetics of Austerity: In Conversation with Liz Crow.” PUBLIC 53 (June 2016): 118-130.

“‘Navigators and Friends’: An Interview with Former Olympic Park Artist in Neville Gabie and Curator Sam Wilkinson.” Contemporary Theatre Review. 23.4 (2013): 593-597.

“The Art of Repeating Stories.” An Interview with Linda Hutcheon.” In Performing Adaptations. Eds. MacArthur, Wilkinson, Zaiontz. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 1-10.  

 “Colonizing the ‘Original’: John Greyson and Queer Adaptations: An Interview.” Co-led with J. Paul Halferty. In Performing Adaptations. Eds. MacArthur, Wilkinson, Zaiontz. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 183-202.  

“Adapting Identities: Race and Rescue in the Work of George Elliott Clarke: An Interview.” Co-led with Lydia Wilkinson. In Performing Adaptations. Eds. MacArthur, Wilkinson, Zaiontz. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 227-242.