Carol Martin

Professor of Drama Affiliation: NYU New York
Education: PhD NYU, Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Research Areas: Theatre about real events, memorial, memory, ghosts, staging spectators, house museums


Carol Martin, PhD, is a Performance Studies scholar of 20th and 21st-century international performance. At NYU New York, she is the Director of the Honors Program. Her research interests focus on theater about real events, memorial, memory, and staging spectators. Her current research project is on House Museums and what scholar Joseph Roach calls the “three-sided relationship of memory, performance, and substitution" in relation to national, cultural, and personal identity expressed in architecture, objects, and the subject of ghosts. Her books include Theatre of the RealDramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage, Brecht Sourcebook, Sourcebook of Feminism and Theatre, and Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture of the 1920s and 1930s. Her articles have been translated into French, Japanese, Chinese, and Polish. Her book series, “In Performance,” is comprised of international anthologies of plays and performance texts and is published by Seagull Books. Her guest-edited issues of TDR include Documentary Theatre, Performing the City, and The Return of the Real.

Recent articles and book chapters include: Prophets Needed: Five Easy Pieces and La Reprise: Histoire(s) du théâtre (I) by Milo Rau” in Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics, and Global Crisis, Routledge, 2022; “Foreign Assembly: Okada’s Time’s Journey Through a Room” in Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre, Performance Research Books, 2021;  “Holding a Mirror Up to Theatre: Milo Rau’s La Reprise: Histoire(s) du théâtre (I) in TDR, T249, winter 2021; “Requiem” in TDR, Fall 2020;  “The Power of Reimagining Cultural Tradition” in Wochi Kochi (Japanese journal), summer 2020; The Theatrical Life of Documents” in Das Dokument in den Künsten, Wilhelm Fink publishers, Berlin, 2016;  "History and Politcs on Stage: The Theatre of the Real" in Not Just a Mirror: Looking for the Political Theatre of Today, 2015; and, "Table on Stage" in Performance Studies in Motion: International Perspectives and Practices in the Twenty-First Century, Methuen, 2014. 

Martin has been awarded several fellowships including Visiting Professor Fellowship at Tokyo University, Komaba, Graduate School of Arts and Science; Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellowship; a Fulbright to India; and a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar Fellowship, and the De La Buena Award for Dance Marathons. She has been a keynote speaker at several international conferences including those held in the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, Israel, the United States, and Hong Kong.

Courses Taught