Carla Melo (Toronto, Canada)
Carla Melo’s artistic research explores the encounter of popular/political and avant-garde traditions. Through physical theatre, devising and structured improvisation, her work seeks to push boundaries between performance, audiences and public sites. She was the co-founder and co-director of the former Corpus Delicti Butoh Performance Lab, a group of “movers” whose performative protest was highly visible in the streets, malls, cemeteries of Los Angeles, from 2003 to 2008. Melo’s performance work has been seen in venues such as Highways Performance Space, REDCAT and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her book in progress, Squatting Dystopia: Performing [Dis]placement in Contemporary Brazil, explores the intersections of environmental and site-specific theatre, visual culture and issues of socio-spatial justice. Her writings have been published in The Drama Review, Latin American Theatre Review, Theatre Journal, Latin American Cultural Studies and e-misferica, among others.
