School of Humanities and Sciences


Showing 1-10 of 141 Results

  • Samer Al-Saber

    Samer Al-Saber

    Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies

    BioSamer is Assistant Professor of Theatre And Performance Studies, and a member of the faculty at the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Before coming to Stanford, he has taught at various institutions (Davidson College, Florida State University) on a wide range of topics, including Conflict and Theatre, Arab Theatre and Culture, Palestinian Theatre, Staging Islam and American Politics, and Orientalism and the Victorians. At Stanford, he teaches courses concerned with identity, race, and ethnicity at the intersection of Islam and the Arts His international research is focused on the cultural dimensions of the Arab World, the Middle East, and Islamicate regions. He has taught widely on topics of Western and non-Western theater as well as American, Middle Eastern, and Global performance. As artist/scholar, his fieldwork intersects with theatre practice as a director and writer. His work appeared in Theatre Research International, Alt.Theatre, Performance Paradigm, Critical Survey, Theatre Survey, Jadaliyya, Counterpunch, This Week In Palestine, and various edited volumes, such as Palgrave’s Performing For Survival, Edinburgh Press’ Being Palestinian, and the Freedom Theatre’s recently published Performing Cultural Resistance in Palestine. He is the co-editor of the anthology Stories Under Occupation and Other Plays from Palestine (Seagull Press/University of Chicago Press) and Arab, Politics, Performance (Routledge - Forthcoming). He edited a collection of plays: Youth Plays from Gaza (Bloomsbury Press). Courses taught include: Performing Identities, Race and Performance, Advanced Directing: Actor-Director Dialog, Making Your Own Solo Show, Edward Said: Scholar Vs Empire, Performing Arabs, Introduction to Comparative Race and Ethnicity, New Play Development, and World Theater History. Samer serves on the advisory boards of Arab Stages and Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco.

    Areas of expertise: Theory; History; Criticism; Middle East Studies, Western Theater, Non-Western theater, Race and Performance, Middle Eastern Theatre; Islam and the Arts; Arab Theatre; Directing; Historiography; Postcolonialism; Nationalism; Ethnography; Performance, Politics, Casting, and Collaboration.

  • Marlon Ariyasinghe

    Marlon Ariyasinghe

    Ph.D. Student in Theater and Performance Studies, admitted Autumn 2023

    BioMarlon Ariyasinghe (he/him) is a writer, editor, theatre practitioner and researcher from Sri Lanka. He is a master’s graduate in English from the University of Geneva and received his BA (honors) in English from the University of Peradeniya. He served as the secretary of the Sri Lanka Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and has organized multiple international literary conferences from 2010-2023. He was the co-editor of Mise en Abyme: International Journal of Comparative Literature and Arts (VIII, Issue 2), a special edition on Sri Lankan Combative Art, Angampora. He was the Senior Assistant Editor at Himal Southasian, a regional magazine of politics and culture. His rapportage has been featured in Reuters, DW, BBC World, WION, The Washington Post, NPR, and other outlets worldwide. Marlon has directed plays for Emmet Theatre Company in Geneva and published a collection of poetry Froteztology in 2011. Marlon’s research interests include Southasian theatre and historiography, performing blackness, Southasian antiblackness, cognition and performance, theatre pedagogy, and decolonizing actor-training methodologies. His research has been published in The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Mise en Abyme: International Journal of Comparative Literature and Arts, and Phoenix: Sri Lanka Journal of English in the Commonwealth.
    He tweets at @exfrotezter.

  • Nina Ball

    Nina Ball

    Lecturer

    BioNina Ball (she/ her) is an award winning scenic designer whose professional work has been seen at American Conservatory Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, California Shakespeare Theater, Shotgun Players, San Francisco Playhouse, Marin Theatre Company, Aurora Theatre Company, Center Repertory Theatre, UC Berkeley TDPS, TheatreFIRST, The Cutting Ball Theater, San Jose Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Z Space, among many others. She has been a company member at Shotgun Players in Berkeley since 2009 as well as TheatreFIRST (also in Berkeley) since 2018.

    Recent awards include a Theatre Bay Area award for "The Nether" at San Francisco Playhouse; San Francisco Bay Area Critic Circle awards for her designs of "My Fair Lady" at San Francisco Playhouse and "Metamorphosis" at the Aurora; a Shellie award for "Mirandolina" at Center REP; a Broadway World San Francisco Award for "Care of Trees" at Shotgun Players and an Arty Award for her design of "Eurydice" at Solano College Theatre. In addition to theatre, Ms. Ball is also a production designer and has worked on numerous film, TV and commercial productions locally and in LA.

    Ms. Ball holds a bachelor degree in biology with an emphasis in marine ecology from UC Santa Cruz and studied visual art and photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City. She received her masters degree in scenic design with a costume design secondary from San Francisco State University.

    She is also a lecturer at UC Berkeley where she teaches Design for Performance in the Theatre Dance and Performance Studies department.

    Ms. Ball is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829.

    ninaball.com

  • Becky Bodurtha

    Becky Bodurtha

    Senior Lecturer of Theater and Performance Studies

    BioBecky Bodurtha is a professional costume designer with regional, international and New York City credits. Recent credits include Drowing in Cairo (Potrero Stage), Felix Starro (Theatre Ma-Yi), Open (The Tank), 1000 Nights and One Day (Prospect Theatre Company), and Mr. Burns (NYU Gallatin). Other credits: Constellations (Wilma), The Strangest (East 4th Street), Among the Dead (Theatre Ma-Yi) Passover (Cherry Lane), The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra, Go! (Theatre Ma-Yi), Livin’ La Vida Imelda (Theatre Ma-Yi), and This Lingering Life (HERE Arts). International credits include Anna in the Tropics (Repertory Philippines), Movement for Humanity and Africa’s Hope for the Ubumuntu Festival in Kigali, Rwanda. Becky is the resident costume designer for Vermont Shakespeare Festival where she recently designed Taming of the Shrew and Julius Caesar. She has served as an assistant costume designer on Broadway as well as on feature film.

    Alongside her professional design work, Ms. Bodurtha has been an educator with 15 years of experience in teaching the new generation collaborative design and theatre making.

    She received her MFA in Theatre Design from University of Iowa. Please visit her website at: www.beckybodurtha.com