Evan Hill

He/Him

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theatre

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Evan Hill

He/Him

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theatre

Evan is a dramaturg, critic, editor, playwright, researcher, and educator. He holds an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama, where is completing his DFA.  His dissertation research, informed by theories of social innovation and creative cognition, examines experimental comic practices and avant-garde humor from the late 19th century to the present.  He has served as managing and associate editor of Yale’s journal Theater.  He is also the resident dramaturg of Chicago’s Theatre Y, with whom he has also created several new works, such as The Camino Project and Laughing Song. Much of his creative work explores the theatricality of time, urban space, play, and the participatory aesthetics of ritual and relationality. He is currently working on a forthcoming essay for the journal Comedy Studies that discusses how meme-culture and live-streamed comedy shows on social media, like The H3 Podcast, have generated new models of humor production, parasociality, and labor between comedians and their publics. 

Education

MFA, Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Yale School of Drama

DFA (ABD), Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Yale School of Drama

Research Interests

Comedy and Humor Studies, Theater and Cognition, Postdramatic Theater, Participatory and Relational Aesthetics in Contemporary Performance, Avant-Garde Studies

Additional Information

Publications: 

 “Complicating Comedy, Engineering Behavior: An Interview with Michael Portnoy”, Theater (53.1), Summer 2023.

“Upfront: Crypto-Comedy”, Theater Magazine (53.1), Summer 2023.

“The Object of Comedy”, book review, New England Theater Journal, Fall 2020. 

“Documentary Pragmatism: Or How to Know How a Document Works”, Theater (50.1), Spring 2020. 

[*Winner of John W. Gassner Prize, awarded by Yale School of Drama and Theater Magazine]

“A History of the Radical Future, 1968-Present, From the Archives of Theater”, Theater (50.1), Spring 2020.  

“Promenade/What is Love?” in Lato (Romanian Literary Journal), Feb. 2016.