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Alexander Lazaridis Ferguson

Alexander Lazaridis Ferguson, PhD

Sessional Instructor

Theatre

email Alexander Lazaridis

Biography

Alex is Artistic Director of Fight With a Stick Performance, recognized as one of Canada’s most innovative performance companies. Alex completed his PhD at UBC in Scenography and Embodied Cognition, has been published in several academic journals, and writes on theatre and contemporary dance for several journals. He is a veteran of the Vancouver theatre scene, has performed lead roles at Canadian Stage, The Vancouver Playhouse, The Arts Club, The Belfry Theatre, and Bard on the Beach — to name some of the larger theatre companies. He has performed with, written text for, and been a dramaturg with some of Vancouver’s leading contemporary dance companies including MACHiNOiSY, Holy Body Tattoo, Kokoro Dance, Shay Kuebler, and others.

His preference is for working with smaller, more flexible performance groups and to collaborate with visual artists, dance artists, structural engineers, sound artists, philosophers, and fashion designers. As a director he has also developed and presented applied theatre advocacy work with the Philippine Women’s Center of BC in Vancouver, Berlin, and Manila. He studied as an actor at Studio 58, and as a professional has received several awards for acting and directing. As a playwright he has been produced by Rumble Productions, Main Street Theatre, Vanity Productions, and others. His “action poetry” ensembles AWOL Love-Vibe and VERBOMOTORHEAD broke ground for poetry performance and toured internationally at everything from main stages of jazz and folk festivals to book stores. His current interest is in scenography, embodied cognition, transdisciplinary performance, and collaborating with other-than-human-materialities. Recent work (2022) includes Migration, a live main-stage collaboration with visual artist Tomoyo Ihaya, The Refrain: Getting in Sync with the World, a new podcast series, and Now Showing, an animated short created with animator Shehzar Abro and composer James Maxwell.

 

www.fightwithastick.ca
www.talkperformance.org

Education

  • PhD - University of British Columbia
  • MA, Theatre - University of British Columbia
  • Graduate of the Studio 58 Acting Program, Theatre Arts - Langara College

Teaching Interests

Alex's areas of expertise are performance theory, interdisciplinary collaboration, scenography theory, embodied cognition and performance, installation art, directing, playwriting, postdramatic theatre, immersive theatre, new materialism, and object ontology. 

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