Alberto Guevara

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Fine Arts Cultural Studies Program, York University

National Theatre School -- Managua, BA (Sociology and Anthropology) – Concordia, MA (Social Anthropology) -- York, Ph.D. (Interdisciplinary) -- Concordia. Assistant Professor: Performance Studies

Originally from Nicaragua, Professor Guevara has harbored a lifelong interest in the intersections of performance and politics. Under the Nicaraguan Sandinista government, he participated in a cultural brigade and received training at the National Theatre School. In Toronto, Montreal, and most recently in Lethbridge, Professor Guevara has collaborated in a number of inter-cultural theatre organizations including Teatro Sin Fronteras, Mise au Jeu, and Act!vision. Professor Guevara holds an interdisciplinary doctoral degree (Performance, Communications, and Cultural Anthropology) from Concordia University. His scholarly work focuses on contestations of social and national identities through performance and the theatricality of violence in Nicaragua and Nepal. While publishing on these issues, Alberto has co-curated and contributed multi-media works to two exhibits dealing with the aftermath of the Nicaraguan revolution (“20 ans aprés Reagan”, Long Hall Gallery, Montreal and “Nicaraquoi?”, Tongue n Groove Gallery, Lethbridge). His latest major project, “La Transformist,” is an experimental documentary on the life and passions of a transvestite Nicaraguan circus performer.

INVITED PRESENTATIONS

  • 2008 Invited presentation to the KLai:Juba Lecture Series for Spring 2008 “Uncommon Ground: Everyday Aesthetics and the Intensionality of the Public Realm” Architecture Studies, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Presentation: ‘Pesticide, Performance, Protest: The Theatricality of Flesh in Nicaragua.’

EDITORIAL POSITIONS

  • 2007 Co-founder and co-managing editor with Elysee Nouvet of InTensions, an interdisciplinary, international peer reviewed (double-blind) e-journal published biannually out of Fine Arts Cultural Studies at York University. This initiative brings together interventions by scholars and artists whose work deals with the theatricality of power, corporealities of structural violence, and sensory regimes. InTensions http://www.yorku.ca/intent/issue1/

INTERNAL RESEARCH FUNDING (Principal recipient)

  • 2007 York University SSHRC Small Grant
    • Used to start research on pesticide, performance and protest in Nicaragua.
  • 2007 Dean of FFA Special Allocation Fund (InTensions E-Journal)
    • Seed money to commence E-journal, InTensions
  • 2006 Dean of FFA Special Allocation Fund (Postproduction fund)
    • Allocated to assist on the postproduction of the documentary “Dalits, Dramas, Dreams.”
  • 2005 University of Lethbridge Research Fund (ULRF)
    • Utilized to conduct research on the theatricality of violence in Nepal. A documentary film was produced in 2007
  • 2004 University of Lethbridge Internal SSHRC
    • Utilized to conduct research on the theatricality of violence in Nepal. A documentary film was produced in 2007

EXTERNAL RESEARCH FUNDING

  • 00-02 Social Sciences and Humanities Doctoral Fellowship (SSHRC)

PUBLICATIONS

PRINT

  • n.d. "Other Spectacles: Theatricalities of Power and Marginality in Nicaragua." In preparation. (Book under contract)
  • n.d. "Re-enacting the Nation: Unsettling Narratives in the El Gueguense Theatre of Nicaragua." 452F Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature (In Print)
  • 2009 "The Theatricality of Violence and the Kachahari Theatre of Sindhuli Nepal.Ó The Applied Theatre Researcher/IDEA Journal. (2009): Issue 10.
  • 2008 “Pesticide, Performance, Protest: The Thearicality of Flesh in Nicaragua” Issue 1, Spring 2008. InTensions http://www.yorku.ca/intent/issue1/
  • 2007 Film review “The Rear Window: Indigenous Peoples in Chilean Fictional Films and Film Documentaries from the Perspective of Visual Anthropology.” Directed by Francisco Gallardo and Margarita Alvarado. Visual Anthropology Review. Volume 23, Number 2 (Fall 2007)
  • 2006 “Where Heroes and Ideologies are Cast and Outcast: Changing Regimes and Public Spaces in Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua.” December (2006) Brujula 5.
  • 2005 Book review “The Performance of History and Memory: The Archive and the Repertoire” (Diana Taylor, Durham and London: Duke University Press 2003.), The Canadian Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. July 1 (2005).

FILM

  • 2009 Official selection to DOXA Documentary Film Festival, May 22--31, 2009, (Vancouver, in competition).
  • 2008 Film “Terra Sacer.” Director/producer/editor. OxPilot Productions in association with Alba Films. Distributed by Vtape (Toronto). An experimental film about the connections between exploited landscapes and bodies, and between the politics of environmental and social abandonment. The film explores performances of suffering as presented by pesticide-afflicted Nicaraguans camping out in front of the country’s National Palace.
  • 2008 Film “Terra Sacer.” Official selection to the 9th Annual Planet in Focus Environmental, International Film and Video Festival, October 2008, Toronto.
  • 2009 Film “Terra Sacer.” Official selection to DOXA Documentary Film Festival, May 22--31, 2009, Vancouver.
  • 2007 Film “Being Dalit” (“Dalits Dramas Dreams”). Director/producer. OxPilot Productions. Distributed by Vtape (Toronto). This ethnographic film is about the struggle of two young Dalit theatre workers fighting against caste discrimination in war-torn Nepal.
  • 2009 Festival of Visual Anthropology ASPEKTY 20Ð 24 October 2009 (Toru?, Poland)
  • 2009 Film “Being Dalit” (“Dalits Dramas Dreams”). Official competition in the 11th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film Leeds, 1-4 July, 2009.
  • 2009 Film “Being Dalit” (“Dalits Dramas Dreams”). Screened at the Annual Anthropology Film Festival, May 13-16, 2009, Vancouver.
  • 2008 Film “Being Dalit” (“Dalits Dramas Dreams”). was included in the Sélection Officielle of the Festival Du Film De Strasbourg.
  • 2008 Film “Being Dalit” (“Dalits Dramas Dreams”). was selected to screen at the International Youth Festival in Lahore, Pakistan, 2008.

CONFERENCES

  • 2008 “The Experiential, the Visual, the Rhetorical: On the Animal Body” Paper and film presentation with Elysée Nouvet at University Art Association of Canada, York University, 2008, Toronto
  • 2007 “Gueguense: Nationalism and Theatre in Nicaragua” Paper presentation at Canadian Association of Anthropology conference, 2007, Toronto.
  • 2006 “The Theatricality of Violence: The Kachahari Theatre of Nepal” Paper presentation at the Canadian Association of South Asian Studies, (October) 2006, Montreal.
  • 2006 “Globalization and Performance, Theatre for Social Change” Lecture at the Globalization Forum, Internet Video Link (Globalization Studies. University of Lethbridge)
  • 2005 “The Theatre of Ethnography: Intention and Audience in Ethnographic Encounters” The (January) 2005 Arts and Humanities Conference (Hawaii)
  • 2003 “Ethnographic Con-textures--Theatre, Cultural Performance and the Ethnographic Encounter,” CASCA (Nova Scotia)
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