short vita

Prof. Dr. Joy Kristin Kalu is a dramaturg and curator for international performing arts and a theater scholar. She is currently a visiting professor for the theory of performative arts at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Most recently, she was head dramaturg at the Sophiensaele in Berlin (2017-2023). There she was responsible for the ongoing performance and theater program and curated the international festivals Save your Soul (2018) and Risk & Resilience (2020) as well as After Europe (2019) together with Julian Warner and Coming of Age (2021) with Franziska Werner. She also launched the discussion format Politics of Love (ongoing).

Joy Kristin Kalu studied theater studies and North American studies at Freie Universität Berlin and conducted research for her dissertation at New York University. She has taught internationally at universities and theater schools (e.g. Freie Universität Berlin, New York University, Universiteit Gent, Akademie für Darstellende Künste Ludwigsburg, Ernst Busch Hochschule Berlin).

She has worked at various cultural institutions in Germany and the USA, including the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin, the Wooster Group in New York, the Actors' Gang in Los Angeles and the Kunst-Werke Berlin.

In practice and theory, her work focuses on the aesthetics of experimental contemporary theater in German-speaking countries and North America, international Afro-diasporic narratives and aesthetics, relations between visual arts and performing arts since the 1950s, queer studies, critical whiteness and decolonial strategies as well as the tension between theater and therapy. Her book Ästhetik der Wiederholung. Die US-amerikanische Neo-Avantgarde und ihre Performances (Transcript) was based on her dissertation and was published in 2013. She is currently working on the book Das Subjekt der Enthüllung. Inszenierungen der Therapie in künstlerischer und psychologischer. Joy Kristin Kalu is the author of numerous articles and essays that have appeared in anthologies and magazines such as Texte zur Kunst, Theater heute and Paragrana. She is co-editor of the volumes Theater als Intervention. Politiken ästhetischer Praxis (Theater der Zeit 2015), Kunst und Alltag (De Gruyter 2017) and OPENINGS (Alexander Verlag 2021).

In 2024 she is a jury member of the Tabori Preis. She was a member of the Board of the Fonds Darstellende Künste 2018-2022 and was a member of the jury of the Forced Entertainment Award (2018), the Stückemarkt of the Berliner Theatertreffen (2018), the Homebase funding of the Fonds Darstellende Künste (2016/17) and the advisory board of the Impulse Theaterfestival 2017.