The Career Achievement in Academic Theatre Award honors individuals who are known for remarkable scholarly and creative contributions to the field, whose work has passed the test of time with its original thinking, and whose service has proven significant in shaping the field and future of theatre and performance. Awardees are authentic role models to colleagues and students, nurture the careers of others, and are effective champions of diversity in theatre and education.This year’s award recipient is:

D. Soyini Madison
Professor Emeritus of Performance Studies
Northwestern University

D. Soyini Madison is Professor Emeritus in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Madison’s work focuses on the intersections of labor activism, political economy of human rights, environmental justice, and indigenous performance tactics. Her book, Acts of Activism: Human Rights and Radical Performance, is based on local activists in Ghana, West Africa and how they employ modes of performance, as tactical interventions, in their day-to-day struggles for women’s rights, water democracy, and economic justice. Madison’s most recent books include: Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance and PerformED Ethnography and Communication: Improvisation and Embodied Experience. Madison adapted and directed her ethnographic experiences in Ghana in two staged productions: Is It a Human Being or A Girl?, a performed ethnography on traditional religion, modernity, and gendered poverty in West Africa; and, Water Rites, a multi-media performance on the privatization of public water and the struggle for clean and accessible water as a human right. Madison also wrote and directed Labor Rites, a mosaic of the USA labor movement as human labor has been variously organized, valued, and contested. Earlier public performances include I Have My Story to Tell and Mandela, the Land, and the People. Madison’s most recent performance work, Seahorse and Bellymouth, takes a turn into a mythic and allegorical representation of climate change and environmental capitalism depicting pan relational species across nations, forests, and ocean life.

Acceptance Speech

Interview

ATHE offers special thanks to the Career Achievement subcommittee members for their work this cycle.