Robert Motum

Robert Motum is a playwright, director, and researcher. With a background in site-specific performance, Robert has staged work on an active city bus, in a dorm room, in a Queen West gallery, in a castle, in a vacant Target store, and occasionally even in a theatre space. His work has been supported by the Stratford Festival Playwright's Retreat, Why Not Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, the Ontario Arts Council, and others. He is the playwright of A Community Target (Outside the March / Convergence) - a verbatim look into Canada's precarious retail climate.

Recent directing credits include: King Charles III* (Mirvish/Studio 180, *assistant) and The Grass is Greenest at the Houston Astrodome (Toronto Fringe).
 
Now based in Hamilton, Robert is in the process of launching a large project with Tottering Biped Theatre, the Hamilton Fringe, and the Cotton Factory: PLAY THIS - a series of site-specific immersive audio guides to the city. He holds an MA in Performance from Aberystwyth University (Wales) and is a current PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance at the University of Toronto where he studies site-specificity and notions of nationhood.

Forthcoming Publications 

Motum, Robert. "Scripted Borders: Exploring the Performance of Micronationhood." The Routledge Companion to Cultural Texts and the Nation. Routledge.

Motum, Robert "Calling from Canada: Exploring the Shift to Telephonic Theatre During COVID-19." Pandemic Play: Community in Performance, Gaming, and the Arts. Palgrave MacMillan. 

Motum, Robert. "Hamilton: a guidebook from memory." Published with the support of the City of Hamilton Placemaking Grant and the Patrick J. MacNally Charitable Foundation.

Selected work

Motum, Robert. "Performing in Public: Ethics of a Site-Specific Theatre Practice." Canadian Theatre Review. Vol. 192, 2022.

Motum, Robert. "Reflections on a Verbatim Approach to Staging Age." Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 42 (2), November 2021. 

Motum, Robert. "Dr. Shira Taylor on SExT (Sexual Education by Theatre)." Interview for the Oral Histories Gallery of the Gatherings Partnership Project. May 2022.

Motum, Robert. “A Community Target: Practicing a Community-Specific, Site-Specific Art.” Comparative Media Arts Journal, vol. 7, Feb. 2020. 

Motum, Robert. "Kitchener-Waterloo: a guidebook from memory." Published with the support of the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, October 2016. 

Major Grants and Awards:

• SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, $20,000
• Government of Canada Mainstreet Activator Grant, $25,000
• City of Kingston Arts Fund, $10,000
• Ontario Graduate Scholarship, $15,000