Dr. Natalie Alvarez

Associate Professor
Theatre Praxis

BA (English Literature), Simon Fraser University
MA (Dramatic Literature), University of British Columbia
PhD (Theatre Studies), Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto

Office: TH 146J
Telephone: 905.688.5550 ext. 4496
Email: nalvarez

on leave until July 2014

Natalie Alvarez joined Brock in 2006 as a cross-appointed faculty member in the Departments of Liberal Arts and Dramatic Arts where she teaches in the Theatre Praxis Concentration. Her research interests include: performance theory; North American contemporary performance; performativity in simulations and reenactment culture; Latina/o-Canadian theatre and performance; genealogies of nostalgia and performance; as well as performance analysis and pedagogy. In 2010, she received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant for her manuscript project entitled Enactments of Difference: Simulations and Performance from Training to Dark Tourism. She serves as Co-Editor for the Canadian Theatre Review’s Views and Reviews and has two forthcoming books with Playwrights Canada Press, Fronteras Vivientes: an Anthology of Latina/o-Canadian Plays and New Essays on Latina/o-Canadian Theatre and Performance. Natalie has also worked as an actor and director; for DART’s 2008-2009 mainstage season, she directed a multi-media adaptation of Euripides’ Medea and in 2010 for Nuit Blanche Brock, a dance installation piece in the fifth floor glass box of Brock’s Earp Residence, which audiences watched from outside the building below. She also served as the writer and story-editor for The Limelighters, a four-part documentary series for Global Television about Toronto’s Performing Arts Lodge, which won several SMPIA awards including Best Script.

See also here for more news about Natalie's research.

Recent Publications:

Alvarez, Natalie. “Performance as Pathology: the Case of Munchausen’s Syndrome and Performative Illness” Theatre Journal 63.2 (May 2011): 209-224.

Alvarez, Natalie. “Fronteras Imaginarias: Theorizing Fronterizidad in the Simulated Illegal Border Crossings of El Alberto, Mexico.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism  (Spring 2011): 1-13.

Alvarez, Natalie and Stephen Johnson. “Minstrels in the Classroom: Teaching, Race, and Blackface.” Canadian Theatre Review 147 (Summer 2011): 31-37.

Alvarez, Natalie and Catherine Graham, eds. Special issue on Performance and Health. Canadian Theatre Review 146 (Spring 2011): 103pp.  

Alvarez, Natalie. “Bodies (Un)Seen: the Early Modern Anatomical Theatre and the Danse Macabre of ‘Theatrical Looking.’” Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts (in press).

Alvarez, Natalie. “Realisms of Redress: Alameda Theatre and the Formation of a Latina/o-Canadian Theatre and Politics.” New Canadian Realisms. Eds. Roberta Barker and Kim Solga. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press (forthcoming in 2011).

downloadable pdf