School of the Arts Directory

María José Contreras is a Chilean multidisciplinary artist and scholar working in the international field of theatre and performance. As a theatre-maker, dramaturg, performer, educator, and scholar, she operates at the intersection of research and art, exploring the interrelations and frictions between embodied practice, performance, memory, and urban space. A feminist performance scholar-practitioner from Latin America, her work engages with transforming civic and academic spaces by facilitating practices of collaboration and collective creativity.

Her commitment to decolonizing theatre-making, teaching, and research is recognized in The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader (London: Routledge, 2020), an international volume featuring 73 leading global artists pioneering innovative approaches to performance. Her artistic practice spans the Americas and Europe, encompassing theatre productions, site-specific performances, durational works, and urban interventions. Her recent project, Antigone Adrift, premiered at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, bringing together international activists to reflect on the figure of Antigone.

She has co-edited Cadáver exquisito: tres experiencias de investigación performativa en Chile (Oso Liebre, 2020) and Women Mobilizing Memory (Columbia University Press, 2019). Her forthcoming book, Viscous Performances: The Persistence of Creative Resistance in Neoliberal Chile, will be published by Duke University Press.

Before joining the faculty at Columbia, Contreras served as Associate Professor at Universidad Católica de Chile, where she chaired the Ph.D. Program in Arts, and as Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Performance Studies at NYU.