Paul Bonin-Rodriguez is a playwright, performer, and scholar whose works have been produced internationally since 1992. His plays have been published in Text and Performance Quarterly (TPQ, 2005), Jump-Start Playworks (Wings Press, 2004), and The Color of Theater (Continuum, 2002). Currently, he is Lecturer at the University of Texas, where he completed his doctorate in the Performance as Public Practice Program in 2006. Dr. Bonin-Rodriguez’s dissertation, Artists Material Practices: The Ideology of Funding and Support for Independent Performing Artists, combines cultural studies, performance studies, social studies, and economics to examine how current systems of support are discursively constructed by the field and experienced by artists. He has twice been named a Tennessee Williams Fellow at the University of the South; he is also a recipient of a Ford Foundation Minority Pre-doctoral Fellowship. In San Antonio, TX, where he is based, he is a member of Jump-Start Performance Co., a community-based performance organization that supports the creation of all original work, as well as a founder of the San Antonio Dance Umbrella. He has served on the Board of Jump-Start, the San Antonio Dance Umbrella, the Blue Star Arts Space, and the National Performance Network. In a past life, he danced for Colorado Ballet, the Tampa Ballet, and Austin Ballet Theater. He and his partner, Hank Lee, run San Angel Folk Art, a gallery committed to providing sustaining relationships to outsider, visionary, and folk artists from across the world.