Robert Motum

Robert Motum is a Canadian playwright and theatre creator.^[1] He is noted for his background in site-specific performance^[2] and for his academic research into micronations.

Motum was born in 1991 in Oshawa, Ontario. He attended the University of Waterloo for his BA in Drama^[3] and Aberystwyth University for his MA in Practising Performance.^[4] He recently completed a PhD in performance studies at the University of Toronto^[1] and currently teaches at the Rotman School of Management.

As a site-specific theatre practitioner, Motum has a history of staging new theatrical work outside of purpose-built auditoriums.^[2] His 2013 play, Transience, was staged on an active Grand River Transit city bus as it circled its loop of Kitchener-Waterloo.^[5] He has since staged work in public parks,^[4][6] in a Queen Street art gallery,^[7] inside a vacant Target store,^[8] in a castle,^[9] throughout the streets of Hamilton, Ontario,^[10] and in augmented reality.^[11] His work has been supported by the Stratford Festival, the Ellen Ross Stuart Opening Doors Award,^[12] Outside the March^[13] and others.

His verbatim play, A Community Target, is based on interviews with over 60 former employees of Target Canada and recounts the dramatic collapse of the retailer in the country. Staged inside a vacant Target store in Hamilton, Ontario, the piece garnered national^[14][15] and international media attention.^[16]

Motum has written about the ethics of site-specific performance and verbatim theatre for various academic publications including the Canadian Theatre Review and Theatre Research in Canada.^[17] He is also a leading academic expert on micronations, having written extensively on their performative enactments of sovereignty and identity.^[18] His research—featured in Digital Society,^[19] The Routledge Companion to Cultural Texts and the Nation,^[20] and The Drama Review—positions micronations as critical interventions in statecraft and citizenship. He has presented at international conferences, including MicroCon, and has appeared in documentaries on the topic.^[21]