Eleanor Bishop

Eleanor Bishop makes socially engaged performance experiences that seek to untangle complex systems of oppression through active participation by audiences. Her pieces often blend found text, documentary interviews and live camera, and play with the performative structures we know as 'theater', 'seminar', or 'debate'. She embraces that her work sits neither easily in performance, art, or activism and she often partners with organisations and institutions to create deep, long term collaborations for her projects.

She has worked as an assistant director for The Builders Association, Big Art Group and as a directing intern at The Wooster Group. Originally from Aotearoa-New Zealand, she received her BA in Theater (Honors) at Victoria University of Wellington and recently completed her MFA in Directing at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama in Pittsburgh, PA, USA where she studied as a John Wells Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. Prior to coming to the United States, she worked in New Zealand as a freelance director, and co-director of acclaimed New Zealand theater company The PlayGround Collective, whose work across site-specific, new writing and participatory forms toured to arts festivals and venues nationally.