Interview with Antonio Prieto Stambaugh, conducted by Diana Taylor, founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. This interview is a part of a series curated by the Hemispheric Institute, articulated around the question 'What is Performance Studies?' The series aims to provide a multifaceted approach to the often difficult task of defining the coordinates of both a field of academic study as well as a lens through which to assess and document cultural practice and embodied behavior. The contingent definitions documented in this series are based on the groundbreaking experiences and the scholarly endeavors of renowned figures in contemporary performance studies and practice.

Antonio Prieto Stambaugh is a Mexican researcher and professor, focused on issues of performance, contemporary theatre, gender and queer studies. He is currently a full time professor at the Theatre Department of the Veracruzana University, and has previously been visiting lecturer at Stanford Univesity, researcher at El Colegio de Michoacán and director of the Center of Performing Arts Research of Yucatán (Centro de Investigaciones Escénicas de Yucatán of the state’s School of Higher Art Studies). He holds an MA in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a PhD in Latin American Studies from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Mexico’s National University (UNAM). He is member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNI) and of the Hemispheric Institute’s Executive Board. He has published many essays on Chicano and Mexican performance art, as well as on issues of gender and border studies, in diverse anthologies and journals such as Cuadernos Americanos, Debate feminista, Gestos, Theatre Journal, Frontera norte, and Conjunto. Co-author with Yolanda Muñoz González of the book El teatro como vehículo de comunicación (Editorial Trillas, 1992). His most recent book is Jerzy Grotowski: miradas desde Latinoamérica, an anthology he edited, published by the Veracruzana University (2011).