Current Research
Theatre and Performance is a rich and multi-faceted cultural space for the gathering of multiple disciplines. As such, I find it to be an ideal site for the transdisciplinary and multi-modal scholarship that I find valuable and necessary. Looking at both aesthetic representation on stage and cultural performance, my research participates in a variety of discourses and integrates methods from a variety of disciplines, including performance studies, rhetoric, cultural studies, anthropology, dance and movement studies, queer and feminist studies, indigenous studies, art history, and religion.
My most recent research has taken a dramaturgical approach to the study of ritual, magic, and witchcraft through performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic methods. My current work seeks to theorize theatre and performance through dramaturgies of witchcraft as an artistic ritual practice of bringing will to form through the conjuration and manipulation of presence. Within this project, I consider the transformational possibilities of the performing “witch body” as locus of interaction with invisible forces, including supernatural or spiritual forces as well as covert social forces that pervade and exert influence on and off the stage.
Utilizing a variety of research methods, including archival work, ethnography, and performance-as-research, I am exploring the materiality of the body as critical crossroads for magic-the “form-giving will” of immateriality when harnessed in performance-and the possibilities that such magical practice might offer to a larger utopic project of discursive (re)invention towards collective healing and social and political reimagination.
Publications
Articles:
“‘all that is dark, potential, and quiet’: Riding the Hinge in The Witch’s Dance.” Anthropology of Consciousness (2024).
“Suffering The Spirits: Affective Excess in Early Twentieth Century Spiritualist Séance Performance Technique.” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 11, no. 2 (2022).
“Beware the Word: Butoh, Ethnotheatre, and the Limits of Speech.” PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research 4, no. 1 (2021). [Re-printed in Retrospective Issue 6, no. 2 (2024)]
Book Chapters:
“Disappearing Acts: Attending ‘Witch School’ in Brooklyn, NY.” In The Witch Studies Reader, ed. Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2025).
“Butoh Beyond the Body: Shakina Nayfack on Transition, Evolution, and the Spirit at War.” In The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance, ed. Bruce Baird and Rosemary Candelario. (New York: Routledge, 2020.)
