November 2023
Gabriela Yepes-Rossel, a Ph.D. Student in the Interdisciplinary Theater Studies Program, was recently awarded an International Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), a coveted and prestigious grant that since 1917 financially supports women who are not U.S. citizens to seek a PhD degree.
Before enrolling in the ITS program in the Fall of 2021, Gabriela had an extensive career as a writer and director in film and theater, dealing with issues like gender, family, and memory. In her short film Danzak she delved into how migration processes altered gender dynamics within families, affecting the aspirations of young girls. In 2016, she started penning the script of The Dark Hero, a film that portrays a gender-violence case that occurred during the Peruvian Internal Armed Conflict. Her debut stage play, The Therapist, examined the intersections of personal, social, and national trauma experienced by women in their bodies and memories. The Therapist, won the 2017 Sala de Parto Peruvian Playwriting Award and the 2020 Luces Award for Best Peruvian Play.
Gabriela has also sought to make visible the issues of gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace. In 2019, she received a research grant from the Ministry of Culture to study the participation of women in film practice throughout the history of Peruvian cinema. She transformed her findings into Rebels and Braves, an exhibition that took place at the 26th Lima Film Festival. Gabriela is currently in talks with the Catholic University of Peru to turn this exhibition into a book.
A former Fulbright fellow, Gabriela received the 2021 Academic Year Non-Dissertator Graduate School Fellowship to attend UW. While completing her first year of coursework, she presented The Therapist at the Teatro Mayor in Bogotá, Colombia, and oversaw the play’s translation and publication in English by Inti Press in London. The Therapist had its world premiere in the summer of 2023, in a joint production by The Asylum Theater in Las Vegas and the Out of the Wings Theater Collective in London.
The AAUW International Fellowship will support Gabriela to start her dissertation project, which directly deals with Andean drama and performance from a gendered and decolonial perspective. She expects her study to strengthen gender as a crucial analytical concept in the decolonization of Andean performance studies. Upon returning to Peru, she Gabriela plans to continue her research and creative practices in film and theater. Her objective is to establish an independent, tuition-free Andean School of Drama and Performance in Cusco. There, female and non-binary artists will be able to explore and create film and artistic works using techniques from many traditions, but especially their own.