Stop. Rewind. Replay: Performance, Policing, and dismantling a Use of Force Paradigm

Natalie Alvarez is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in Ryerson’s School of Performance where she teaches courses in performance history and theory. She is the author of Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Ann Saddlemyer Book Prize awarded by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR). She is Associate Editor of the Canadian Theatre Review and editor of two books on Latina/o Canadian theatre: Latina/o Canadian Theatre and Performance (Playwrights Canada Press, 2013), winner of CATR’s 2014 Patrick O’Neil Award and Fronteras Vivienties: Eight Latina/o Canadian Plays (Playwrights Canada Press, 2013), winner of the 2015 Patrick O’ Neil Award. She has also served as the editor of a number of journal special issues. She is co-editor with Keren Zaiontz (Queen’s) and Claudette Lauzon (SFU) of Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: Performance Actions in the Americas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and her book Theatre& War is currently in press as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Theatre& series. Her work has been featured in a variety of international anthologies and journals including Theatre Journal, TDR, Contemporary Theatre Review, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Theatre Research in Canada. In 2013, she was awarded the Richard Plant Essay Prize by CATR.

Natalie is the Principal Investigator of a four-year SSHRC Insight Grant, “Scenario Training to Improve Interactions Between Police and Individuals in Mental Health Crisis: Impacts and Efficacy”, which uses performance as a nexus for multidisciplinary research across the humanities and social sciences. With co-investigators Dr. Yasmine Kandil (Victoria) and Dr. Jennifer Lavoie (WLU), the project brings together a national team of theatre practitioners, simulation training experts, police trainers, mental health clinicians, forensic psychologists, and individuals with lived experience of mental illness to design, and measure the efficacy of, problem-based scenario training in de-escalation and mental health crisis response.