Dr William Peterson
PhD (University of Texas), MA (San Diego State University), BSFS (Georgetown University),
GradCertHigherEd (Monash University)
Will Peterson curriculum vitae [
]
Biography
Head of Centre from 2007-2011, I was foundational academic staff in the theatre and drama programs at the National University of Singapore (1992-1995) and the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand (1995-1998). Prior to coming to Monash, I was Associate Professor in Theatre at California State University San Bernardino (1998-2006) and also Co-Director of the university’s International Institute.
My current field work in the Philippines comes together around community-based performance, ranging from religious festivals to street dancing and transgendered performance, and has been supported with residencies and fellowships at the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and the National University of Singapore. From 1992-2001, I focused on English-language theatre in Singapore, resulting in the publication of Theatre and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Singapore (Wesleyan UP, 2001). My written scholarship in the form of book chapters, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries has also examined Maori and Pakeha theatre in Aotearoa, international arts festivals, Australian theatre, Indonesian dance, and American performance art.
As a practitioner, I have served as Artistic Director of San Diego's Diversionary Theatre, and directed, produced and/or acted in theatre in Singapore, New Zealand, San Francisco, and Southern California. I have collaborated on devised work (Mad Uncle Pat, funded by Creative New Zealand) and in 1998 I co-produced the first FUEL Festival of New Zealand Theatre.
Research interests
Community-Based performance in the Philippines
This on-going research seeks to document and contextualise a range of performance activities in the Philippines that define, reinforce, and celebrate the shared belief systems of a specific community. Included are large-scale, festival-based performance work and civic celebrations, religious theatre, national and regional dance drama competitions, and community-based theatre.
Transnational cultural flows
To date, this research has largely focused on the programming at international arts festivals in Asia and the Pacific, though recent fieldwork in the Philippines suggests possible applications of these frameworks to performance work that circulates domestically before a range of audiences, notably those comprised largely of tourists.
Religion and Performance
Extending from on-going research in the Philippines, where religious performance is imbedded in community-based traditions, I am increasingly interested in not only the efficacy behind such performative acts, but also what happens internally to individual participants who undertake a ritual or enact a role in a religious drama.
Theatre in Singapore
Though research into the politics of culture reflected in English-language theatre in Singapore is no longer my primary research interest, I continue to pay attention to and occasionally write about the complex cultural flows that inform theatre practice there.
Selected publications
- Peterson, W. (2009) ‘The Singapore Arts Festival at Thirty: Going Global, Glocal, Grobal’. Asian Theatre Journal, Vol 26.1, Spring. Pages 111-134.
- Peterson, W. (2007) ‘Writing into the Land: Dramatic Monologues in the Expanding Landscape of Aotearoa/New Zealand’, in Maufort, M. edited Performing Aoetearoa: New Zealand Theatre and Drama in an Age of Transition. Brussels, P.I.E. Peter Lang. Pages 103-120.
- Peterson, W. (2007) ‘Holy Week in the ‘Heart of the Philippines’: spirituality, theatre, and community in Marinduque's Moriones Festival’. Asian Theatre Journal, Vol 24.2, Fall. Pages 309-337.
- Peterson, W. (2006) Maori Theatre on Its Own Ground: Moving Past the ‘Post’ in Postcolonialism.’ Critics and Writers Speak: Revisioning Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield/Lexington Books. Pages 126-142.
- Peterson, W. (2001) Theatre and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Singapore. Wesleyan CT, Wesleyan University
Competitive grants
- Visiting Specialist with Access to the Muslim World, for CSUSB (2004), Fulbright Grant, US Deptartment of State.
- Festival of New Zealand Theatre (1998), City of Hamilton..
- Festival of New Zealand Theatre (1998), University of Waikato.
- Mad Uncle Pat, an original folk opera (1996), Creative New Zealand.