Marc Arthur is a Detroit-based artist, researcher, and writer whose work explores how performance can reshape our relationships to history and to one another. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Wayne State University and completed his PhD in Performance Studies from New York University (2019). He was 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. His monograph in development, The Art of Crisis: Performance in the Unfinished Time of AIDS, examines how contemporary queer artists use performance to reshape relationships between the epidemic’s early crises and its ongoing present.

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.

His performance work has been presented at theatres and galleries internationally, including the Park Avenue Armory, 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.

marcarthur@wayne.edu