María José Contreras is a Chilean multidisciplinary
artist/scholar working in the international field of theater and
performance. She is Associate Professor at Columbia University. Her
creative practice and scholarship aim to transform civic and academic
spaces and collective imaginaries. Her engagement with decolonizing
theater-making, teaching, and research practice is recognized in The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader
(London, Routledge, 2020), an international volume featuring the 73
leading global artists working with innovative approaches to
performance. Contreras’ devised theater pieces, urban interventions, and
performances have been presented in important venues and festivals in
the US, Italy, Ukraine, Chile, Argentina, Canada, France and Brazil. In
addition to numerous articles published in several languages, she
recently co-edited two interdisciplinary volumes Cadáver exquisito: tres experiencias de investigación performativa en Chile (Oso
Liebre, 2020) and Women Mobilizing Memory (Columbia University Press,
2019). She is currently working on her manuscript Rigorously
undisciplined: decolonial approaches to performance research.
