Dr. Natalie Alvarez

Associate Professor
Theatre Praxis
(cross-appointed to Liberal Arts)

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

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.

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