Faculty Profile for Dr. Ana Luisa Martinez

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Dr. Ana Martínez holds a doctoral degree in Theatre Studies from the City University of New York, an MA in Scenography from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, and an Architecture degree from Universidad Anahuac in Mexico.

As a scholar, she integrates a knowledge of performance and spatial practices with socially grounded research. Her fields of specialization are theatre practices in Mexico, Latin American and Latinx drama, and site-specific performance. Her book, Performance in the Zócalo: Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico's Central Square from the Colonial Era to the Present (University of Michigan Press, 2020), was selected as one out of six finalists for the Theatre Library Association's 2020 George Freedley Memorial Award. Performance in the Zócalo addresses the ways in which Mexico City's central square manifests and contests its symbolic power through performance practices. Her chapter "Scenographies behind the Scenes" in the edited collection The Stage's Glory: John Rich reconstructs some of Covent Garden's eighteenth-century scenographies through an inventory of sets, props, and costumes. Her chapter on the 2001 march by the Zapatistas to the Zócalo is included in "Performance and the Global City." Her current research focuses on Latin American and Latinx performance, migration, and environmentalism. Her recent article "Bodies of Corn, Maguey, and Water: Performing Latin American / Latinx Environmentalisms" (Critical Stages / Scènes critiques) studies Latin American ecological practices in performance as sources of decolonial knowledge and environmental values.