Carla Melo (she/her) is a researcher, director, performer and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, who is invested in creation and research at the intersections of performance, social engagement and activism across the Americas. Both her scholarly and artistic works explore theatre and performance practices that place corporeality, public space, and the tensions between memory and history, center-stage. Through a decolonial and hemispheric lens, she has paid particular attention to performances practices from Latin American, Afro-diasporic, immigrant and indigenous populations.

Her solo and ensemble-based works have been seen in Brazil, U.S. and Canada and her research has been published in volumes and journals such as Canadian Theatre Review, The Drama Review, Latin American Theatre Review, Latin American Cultural Studies, Theatre Journal and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ E-misferica, among others. She has contributed chapters to various volumes, including Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: Performance Actions in the Americas (Palgrave, 2019) and Bodies on the Front Lines: Performance, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean (2024). She is currently working on a monograph titled Rites to Re-Exist: Performance and Collective Memory in Contemporary Brazil.

Prior to joining University of Toronto (UTSC), Carla served as Assistant Professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute, working primarily in the “Theatre and Performance of the Americas” program (2007-2013) and taught at York, Brock, Toronto Metropolitan and McMaster universities. Since moving to Tkarón:to in 2014, she has also joined the vibrant independent theatre scene and founded her own company: CorpOLuz Theatre.