Marc Arthur is an artist and scholar whose current body of work considers political encounters around the AIDS pandemic at the intersections of identity, gender, race, and science. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and completed his PhD in Performance Studies from New York University (2019) He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow in Arts-based Social Justice Research and Practice at the University of Michigan (2019 – 2022) where he studied community-based performance approaches for decreasing stigma and oppression. He is currently working on his first book project entitled, The Art of Crisis: Supernatural Performance in the Time of AIDS, which investigates how artists embrace supernatural metaphors, which are rooted in fear and discrimination, to effect a transformation of conventional representation, management, and memorialization around the AIDS pandemic.

Arthur’s writing and criticism has appeared in edited volumes and journals including Theatre Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, Bomb Magazine, and Canadian Theatre Review, as well as numerous edited collections. He has also written extensively for Performa Magazine, where he was editor (2015 – 2017). At Performa he also served as the Head of Research and Archives (2011 – 2017) where he organized touring exhibitions, curated programs, led interdisciplinary research projects with a wide range of artists, and spearheaded the acquisition of the Performa collection by NYU’s Fales Library.

His performance work has been presented at theatres and galleries internationally, including the Martha Graham Dance Theater, La MaMa E.T.C., Dixon Place, The Living Theater, Movement Research at Judson Church, the Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance, the Wild Project, University Settlement, and Chashama in New York City; New Langton Arts and David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco; Moyse Theatre at McGill University, Montreal; Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels; the Emily Harvey Foundation, Venice; Universität der Künste, Berlin; and FRISE, Hamburg.

Cover photo by James Emmerman from Mascot (2013), at the Martha Graham Dance Theater