Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Ph.D., works as an artist-scholar in the Performance as Public Program, where he is an Assistant Professor. His research examines the policies, practices, and histories that inform artist sustainability in the United States, with a special focus on queer performance and performances by people of color. Currently, he is at work on a book, The Artist-Producer: How New Market Economies and Cultural Developments Changed the Role of Artists in the U.S. and Abroad, which shows how market forces over the last 100 years have changed social and material expectations of artists in ways not yet recognized by cultural policy sector or many artist training programs. He is also writing Puro Teatro, a musical about the Cubana singer, La Lupe. For Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), a ten-year initiative committed to improving conditions for artists in the United States, he is conducting a study of artist professional development programs in six U.S. cities — Philadelphia, Cleveland, Houston, San Antonio, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. Additionally, he is writing an article that examines how the conservative politics of the 1980s politicized queer performance spaces and energized queer audiences, creating an abundance of queer performance work.
Dr. Bonin-Rodriguez comes to UT after a twenty-year career as an artist. Originally trained as a dancer, he has worked as a television producer, playwright, and actor, as well as an arts administrator. Since 1992, he has toured nationally as a writer-performer. Twice he has been named a Tennessee Williams Fellow at the University of the South in Sewanee, and from 2001 – 2004, he was a Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral Minority Fellow. He has served on the boards of the National Performance Network, the San Antonio Dance Umbrella, and Jump-Start Performance Co. Since 2004, he has served on the five-member Artist Council that advises LINC.
