Sebastián Calderón Bentin

Education

Ph.D., Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
M.A., Performance Studies, New York University
B.F.A., Theater and Anthropology, New York University

Research Interests

Theories of the state, media politics, postcolonial studies, theater and performance in Latin America

Courses Taught

Spectacle and Surveillance
Performance and the State
Preconquest and Colonial Performance in Latin America
Introduction to Theater Studies
Play and Performance

Sebastián Calderón Bentin is an artist-scholar and Associate Professor in the Department of Drama at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His writings have appeared in TDR:The Drama Review, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, Istmo: Revista virtual de estudios literarios y culturales centroamericanos and the anthology Neoliberalism and Global Theaters: Performance Permutations, edited by Lara Nielsen and Patricia Ybarra (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). His current book project, Baroque States: Theatricality and Television in Contemporary Latin America, explores the historical relationship between baroque performance and contemporary mass media in Latin American politics. As a performer he has collaborated with Every House Has a Door, Witness Relocation, Anna Deavere Smith, John Jesurun, Ann Carlson, Faye Driscoll, Tim Etchells and Matthew Goulish’s Institute of Failure, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, among others. He is currently developing a stage adaptation of Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film The Exterminating Angel.

Calderón Bentin has been a visiting teacher in the departments of Spanish and Portuguese at NYU, the Teatro de la Universidad Católica in Peru, and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics of which he is a member. In 2013 he was awarded the Routledge Prize for research excellence at the postgraduate level by Performance Studies international.