PhD student, Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies
Faculty advisor: Paola Hernandez
Gabriela is a PhD student from Lima, Peru, a playwright, film and theater director, and scholar of Andean theater and performance. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from the Universidad de Lima, Peru, and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin, focused on film production and direction. Her latest theater play, The Therapist, has shown in Lima, Peru; Bogotá, Colombia; Las Vegas, U.S.; and London, U.K.
Her graduate research applies a gendered and decolonial perspective to drama and performance in the Southern Peruvian Andes. She seeks to understand the theatricality women performers at collective religious events generate, how it is produced and reproduced, and the kind of knowledge it develops. Her aim with this study is to reinforce gender as an essential analytical category in theatrical and performance research.
“Considering the social and ecological changes in the region in recent years, I seek to understand how gender is negotiated in collective religious spaces, how it intervenes in the relation between performers and the non-human beings that populate Andean landscapes, and how it is experienced by the performers and expressed in ritual and performative practices,” Gabriela says.
Gabriela received a Graduate School Fellowship in 2021-22, which she says was essential in her decision to attend UW–Madison.
“In a time where the pandemic seemed to have closed all doors for film and theater artists, having a full scholarship to come to Madison was, in simple terms, extraordinary,” she said.