Irma Mayorga

Assistant Professor, Theatre Studies
Office: 850.644.7257
E-Mail: imayorga@fsu.edu
Fax: 850.644.7408

Irma Mayorga is an artist/scholar/activista in theater and an Assistant Professor in Theatre Studies in Florida State University's School of Theatre. She holds a B.A. in Theater Arts from the College of St. Benedict, an M.F.A. in Costume Design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Joint Ph.D. in Drama and the Humanities from Stanford University. From Stanford, she also holds the distinction of attaining the first Ph.D. by a Latina/o in the Drama Department's history.

Throughout her career, Dr. Mayorga has sought to work between academic, non-profit, and community based sectors of the arts. She has served as a cultural worker for New WORLD Theater, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. As a playwright, her play Cascarones has earned the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award (student division) and went on to receive an invitation for participation to the prestigious Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference under the artistic leadership of Jim Houghton and with America Ferrera in the leading role. She is the first Chicana playwright to receive invitation to develop and present work at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference. She has received research fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, Stanford University, and Williams College's Bolin Dissertation Fellowship. In 2004, Austin's Evelyn Street Press published her play The Panza Monologues (co-written with collaborator Virginia Grise). The Panza Monologues has also toured successfully throughout the U.S. most recently enjoying presentations in Austin and Dallas. She is a member of the Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE) and founder the Latino/a Focus Group of ATHE.

Her current creative projects include a new play in development, Golondrinas, (adapted from a new novel by Chicana writer Bárbara Renaud Gonzalez) and a DVD of The Panza Monoloues in performance (forthcoming in 2009). She is currently at work on a book-length manuscript, tentatively titled: Constructing Stages of Hope: Performance and Theatricality in the Aesthetic Logics of Chicana Expressive Culture. Her research interests include contemporary theater and performance by people of color (Latina/o, African American, Asian American, Native American), Chicana expressive culture, and U.S. Latina/o culture. She is also a director, dramaturg, curator, and holds a "highly certified" teaching license as a public school educator in Special Education for the state of Texas.