- Ph.D., Theatre History & Criticism, Louisiana State University
Dr. Eric Mayer-García
Assistant Professor, Theatre History, Theory, and Literature
- emayerg@iu.edu
- Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center, A300C
- Office Hours
Education
About Eric Mayer-García
Eric Mayer-García is a Latinx performance historiographer whose contributions to and interventions in theatre history studies foreground Latinx presence in discourses of avant-garde art-making. He graduated with his Ph.D. from the LSU School of Theatre in 2016. The research for his first book project, tentatively titled Hemispheric Waves of Avant-Garde Theatre has received many awards and accolades, including the research fellowship from the College Arts and Humanities Institute (IUB, College of Arts and Sciences), the in-residence research fellowship from the Cuban Heritage Collection in the University of Miami Libraries, the LSU Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship, the Ann Veronica Simon Award for Outstanding Gender Studies Dissertation, and special recognition from the Ford Foundation. Compared with the first or second waves of avant-garde theatre moving along transatlantic currents of influence, Hemispheric Waves follows the history and movement of transnationally mobile artists in multiple directions across the Americas from 1965 to 2000. His other research interests include applying performance studies to think through archival research. Particularly Mayer-García analyzes the archival collections of theatre critics through the lens of their labor, emphasizing their undertheorized role in mediating theatre history.
Mayer-García's most recent publications related to his book project appear in two articles in Theatre History Studies, volume 39—a single-authored essay and photo essay co-authored with Chicana Cultural Worker Ana Olivarez-Levinson. Drawing upon Olivarez-Levinson's personal photography collection, this scholarship focuses on the mobilities of two US-based theatre collectives, Teatro 4 (Teatro Cuatro) and Teatro de la Esperanza, both of which were active in the Latin American theatre movement known as Nuevo Teatro and benefited from an ongoing exchange with artists in revolutionary Cuba during the 1980s. In the lead article appearing in an issue of Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures from 2018, Mayer-García situates María Irene Fornés’s first production with INTAR, Cap-a-Pie (1975), as an early instantiation of Latinx Affect, arguing that the production dramatizes the emergence of latinidad as a multiply-bordered consciousness through an ontology of displacement. Currently, he is working on two contributions for edited volumes: the first about the early life of María Irene Fornés and the second on Latinx Presence in New York’s Underground Avant-garde Arts Scene from 1965-1975.
Recent publications
"Esu's crossroads and Ogun's crossing over: Intercultural creativity and postcolonial futurity in the theatre of Femi Euba." Special Issue of Atlantic Studies, Esu's crossroads: Transcultural creativity in the works of Femi Euba and Wole Soyinka, edited by Eric Mayer-García and Solimar Otero (2022). https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2019.1647646.
Co-author with Solimar Otero, "Introduction: Crossroads of generational thinking," Special Issue of Atlantic Studies." Esu's crossroads: Transcultural creativity in the works of Femi Euba and Wole Soyinka, edited by Eric Mayer-García and Solimar Otero(2022). https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.1955583.
"Latinx/Latine, Contrapunteo 1: Intersectionality and Genealogies of Third World Feminist Thought." Journal of American Folklore. Special Issue on Latinx Folklore. Vol. 135, No. 536 (2022).
"Eduardo Machado." Fifty Key Latin American and Latinx Artists, edited by Paola Hernández and Analola Santana, 2022. 112–116. Routledge Key Guides. London: Routledge.
"Luis Rafael Sánchez." Fifty Key Latin American and Latinx Artists, edited by Paola Hernández and Analola Santana, 2022. 154–158. Routledge Key Guides. London: Routledge.
"Folk Belief and the Open Text: Reading Quiara Alegría Hudes' Water by the Spoonful in the Company of Cyber-Souls." Louisiana Folklore Miscellany, 30, Special Issue on Frank De Caro 2021. pp. 55-67.
"Thinking East and West in Nuestra América: Retracing the Footprints of a Latinx Teatro Brigade in Revolutionary Cuba." Theatre History Studies, Vol. 39. Special Section on Hemispheric Historiography, 2020. pp. 140-168.
Co-authored with Ana Olivarez-Levinson. "Intercambio: A Visual History of Nuevo Teatro from the Ana Olivarez-Levinson Photography Collection." Theatre History Studies, Vol. 39, Special Section on Hemispheric Historiography, 2020. pp. 169-184.
"Feeling Brown Like You: Creación Colectiva and Latinx Affect in Fornés's Cap-a-Pie." Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, Vol. 3, no. 1, 2018. pp. 23-48.
"Of Fugitives, Sinners, and Exiles: Profaning the Canon in Oliver Mayer's Playwriting." Blood Match and Other Plays. Edited by Eric Mayer-García (2017). New York: NoPassport Press.
Recent Credits
Water by the Spoonful
IU Theatre — Dramaturg
The College of Arts