Carol Martin

Carol Martin is Professor of Drama at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Director of the Honors Program and an affiliated faculty at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her books include Theatre of the Real (Palgrave, 2012), which explores international iterations of theatre about real events; Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (University Press of Mississippi, 1994), a study of the development of dance marathons in the U.S. that received the De la Torre Bueno Award; Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage (Palgrave, 2010), which examines how the notion of the “real” in theatre is both asserted and challenged; A Sourcebook on Feminist Theatre and Performance (Routledge, 1996); and, co-edited with Henry Bial, Brecht Sourcebook (Routledge, 2000). She has guest-edited special issues of the leading international performance studies journal TDR: The Drama Review and published numerous articles and book chapters on contemporary theatre, which have been translated into French, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Turkish.

    Recent book chapters include: “Musée Nissim de Camondo: House Museums as Haunted Memorials” in In Memoriam edited by D.J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr, Aviva Neff, and Alison Urban, Routledge, forthcoming, 2026; “Masa Si Lumea Din Afara Scenei: Obiectele Scenice in Theatrul Realului,” in Teatrele Documentate edited by Beatrice Picon-Vallin (in Romanian) 2023; “Foreign Assembly: Okada’s Time’s Journey Through a Room” in Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre edited by Peter Eckersall, Andreas Regelsberger, Barbara Geilhorn, and Cody Poulton, Performance Research Books, 2021; “Under the Radar Festival, New York: Experimental, Urban and Global” in Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals edited by Ric Knowles, Cambridge University Press, 2020; “La Table et Le Monde Hors Scène: Les Objects Scéniques Dans Le Théâtre Du Réel” (“Tables and the Offstage World: Stage Objects and Theatre of the Real”) in Les Théâtres documentaires (In French) edited by Beatrice Picon-Vallin, Montlellier, Deuxième époque, 2019.

    Martin is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including a fellowship at Tokyo University, two Fulbright U.S. Scholar Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, the De la Torre Bueno Award, and invitations to deliver keynote lectures internationally. Martin is also the Editor of the book series “In Performance” (Seagull Books, 2007-) devoted to anthologies of international plays and performance texts including the recent Oblivion and Other Play from Post Revolutionary Iran (2025) edited by Nahid Ahmadian and Ali-Reza Mirsajadi and Made in China 2.0 and Other Texts (2026) by Wang Chong edited by Tarryn Chun. Her current research explores the staging of the spectator in relation to the intersections of memory, performance, architecture, objects, and cultural identity in historic house museums.