Robert Motum is a Canadian playwright and theatre creator.
Personal life and education
Motum was born in 1991 in
Oshawa, Ontario. He attended the University of Waterloo for his BA in Drama
and Aberystwyth University for his MA in Practising Performance.
He recently completed a PhD in performance studies at the University of Toronto
and currently teaches at the Rotman School of Management.
Theatre career
As a site-specific theatre practitioner, Motum has a history of staging new theatrical work outside of purpose-built auditoriums.
His 2013 play,
Transience, was staged on an active Grand River Transit city bus as it circled its loop of Kitchener-Waterloo.
He has since staged work in public parks,
in a Queen Street art gallery,
inside a vacant Target store,
in a castle,
throughout the streets of Hamilton, Ontario,
and in augmented reality.
His work has been supported by the Stratford Festival, the Ellen Ross Stuart Opening Doors Award,
Outside the March
and others.
His Verbatim theatre, A Community Target, is based on interviews with over 60 former employees of Target Canada and recounts the dramatic collapse of the retailer in the country. Staged inside a vacant Target store in Hamilton, Ontario, the piece garnered national
Academic scholarship
Motum has written about the
ethics of site-specific performance and verbatim theatre for various academic publications including the
Canadian Theatre Review and
Theatre Research in Canada.
He is also a leading academic expert on
Micronation, having written extensively on their performative enactments of sovereignty and identity.
His research—featured in
Digital Society,
and
The Drama Review—positions micronations as critical interventions in statecraft and citizenship. He has presented at international conferences, including
MicroCon, and has appeared in documentaries on the topic.
