biography
dramaturg. writer. teacher. Artist.
I am a dramaturg, a scholar, and an educator. I make theatrical pieces and carry out research that is investigative, curious, city-minded, and spatially-aware. My work questions, upends, challenges, and deconstructs illusory and seemingly-natural systems in order to decolonize and de-capitalize spaces and places and re-center the human and the social within them.
Simply put, I commit acts of civic dramaturgy.
LaRonika Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Washington College, where she teaches courses in dramaturgy, theatre history, and performance studies. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, where she developed a theory of civic dramaturgy for her dissertation on performances of urban planning, cultural space and cultural policy, and the role of art and culture in 21st century Chicago. Her chapter “Temple-Swapping in the City: The Spatial Imaginary and Performances of Place-Making in the Work of Theaster Gates” is included in Makeshift Chicago Stages: A Century of Theatre and Performance, published by Northwestern University Press. Her essay, “Digital Dramaturgy and Digital Dramaturgs” is included in The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy. She was the 2016 recipient of the ATDS Graduate Student Travel Award for her paper “Toward a Civic Dramaturgy: Performances of Urban Planning in Chicago from Daniel Burnham to Theaster Gates.”
A professional dramaturg, producer, and writer, LaRonika has worked in dramaturgy, literary management, and arts education in Chicago and the Baltimore/DC region.
