Henry Castillo is a Colombian theatre maker and a critic of culture and performance. As an interdisciplinary artist-scholar and educator, his work spans Afro-diasporic theatre and performance as an area of academic inquiry to challenge the Western canon of theatre studies, engage in critical thinking about the process of theatre history-making, and explore the ways in which subjects and subjectivities animate Blackness in Latinx America and the Caribbean across a variety of scenarios, including everyday life. Currently, he is working on his first monograph, entitled Racialized Bodies as Heritage (under contract with University of Michigan Press), in which he intersects performance studies, critical heritage studies, and theories of racial formation to understand how the performance of “heritage” restructures social identities and cultural production among people of African descent in an increasingly globalized world. The project offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of racial formation, national identity, and exclusion in Latinx America and the Caribbean, bridging the gap between cultural heritage and performance criticism.
Henry’s artistic journey began with the Colombian avant-garde theatre collective Teatro Experimental de Cali (TEC), led by the late maestro Enrique Buenaventura. As an actor, he performed with TEC at festivals and venues nationally and internationally. His performance work spans television, film, and stage in Colombia, and he has recently collaborated with NYC playwright and songwriter Dan Fishback, as well as the Austin-based puppet troupe Glass Half Full Theatre. He has also facilitated workshops on Creación Colectiva (collective creation)—a theatre practice, methodology, and experimental site for the expression of new cultural formations, often celebrating shared creativity and cultural storytelling through improvisation techniques. Before joining Northwestern University, Henry was a Provost’s Early Career Fellow in the Department of Theatre and Dance and a Research Fellow in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.
Education
PhD, Performance Studies, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts
MA, Performance Studies, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts
BA, Applied Linguistic/Theatre, University of California Los Angeles
Courses
THEATRE 348 - Transnational Theatre
Publications
The Black Flowers of the Walled City: Tourism and the Embodiment of National Heritage in Cartagena. In Staging Visitation: Tourist Performances and Theatricalized Places. Edited by Bryan W. Schmidt and Weston Twardowski (forthcoming August 2026, University of Michigan Press).