Yoni Prior is Honorary Senior Fellow in Theatre (Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, University of Melbourne). Her PhD (Deakin University 2015), Pragmatic Dramaturgy: The Creative Management of Limits in Performance-Making Processes, investigated contemporary rehearsal processes through the lens of constraints theory. She holds a Bachelor of Education from Rusden State College and an MA in Theatre Studies from Monash University. From 1991 to 2019, Yoni worked as a senior lecturer in Drama at Deakin University, and she was Course Director (Drama) between 1997 and 2017.

She has worked extensively as a performer, deviser, director, dramaturg, translator and writer with theatre and dance companies in Australia and internationally, and her research interests and creative work coincide in a focus on performance practice and creative process. More specifically, she has an abiding interest in how performance is made. Yoni's academic research reflects this focus, and she has published on contemporary performance practice, practice as research, dramaturgy in dance and theatre, rehearsal practice, Jewish theatre, intercultural performance, intermedial and digital theatre, performance and disability, artist training and repertoire development. As a teaching artist, she co-created a number of digital theatre collaborations between Deakin University, the University of Amsterdam, the British Museum and Cambridge University between 2009 and 2013. Recent artistic projects include A Dybbuk Event (Malthouse, 2016) and Dybbuks (Theatreworks, 2018) with Samara Hersch, and Oh Deer (Aphids, Rising Festival 2022) and Sea Wolves Howl (Flinders Fringe, 2023). She has supervised and examined post graduate projects in areas of actor training, theatre direction, devised performance, stage design, applied theatre, and performance art and installation.

Yoni was editor of the journal Australasian Drama Studies from 2018 to 2023 and is Deputy Chair of the Board of Back to Back Theatre.

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Yoni Prior

Honorary (Senior Fellow)

Faculty of Fine Arts and Music

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Yoni Prior

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