Tinamarie Ivey

As a scholar and artist, my work centers on immersive community engagement, using theater as a transformative tool for social change through original play productions. This work amplifies community voices, illuminating both challenges and resilience and fostering critical dialogue among audiences. One of my notable projects, highlighted in an upcoming Routledge Focus volume Ecodramaturgies, features the co-authored chapter "Crossing Currents: A Synergetic Relationship Between Marine Biologists and Theatre Artists," which explores the intersection of science and theater in a community-engaged play addressing the impact of plastic pollution on the oceans. Additionally, my socially engaged arts practice is featured in the chapter "Sanctuary Stage Giving Voice to the Voiceless," in the book Artists Activating Sustainability, The Oregon Story (2023).

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I have collaborated with regional and national theater companies, including Dell’Arte International, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Cornerstone Theatre Company, Redwood Curtain, and Riverside Civic Light Opera. My academic work has led me to teach and direct mainstage productions in theater departments at the University of Texas at Dallas, California State Polytechnic University Humboldt, Oregon State University, and Linn-Benton Community College. As a Ph.D. (ABD) in Interdisciplinary Studies, my research bridges History with the Visual and Performing Arts to examine the politics and aesthetics of gender-fluid expression and male impersonation. I focus on the historical evolution and contemporary performance practices of drag king and gender-nonconforming artists, situating their creative work within broader discourses of embodiment, metamodernism, and queer world-building.

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A recipient of the Texas Educational Theatre Association’s Scholars Debut Award for my 2022 article "Gender in Discourses as Related to Drag King Culture and Theatre Training." My published writings include a chapter in the book Iconic: Drag Celebrities and Queer Communities (2025), “Swaggering Through History: Rebellious Acts in Leigh Crow's Archival Drag,” and “Yas King: Three Generations of Drag” in Liber Magazine, Vol. 3, Issue 4. I am currently developing a new play for Sanctuary Stage that explores the career and acting methodology of 19th-century queer actor Charlotte Cushman.