Guilherme Meletti Yazbek

Guilherme Meletti Yazbek (he/him) is a Brazilian scholar-artist, educator, theatre director, actor, and theatre/dance critic. Grounded in practice-based research, his work brings scholarly inquiry and artistic practice together to investigate performance, embodiment, and urban space — with particular attention to queer bodies, pleasure, and public life in the city. His recent research examines cruising, leisure, and choreopolitics in São Paulo’s downtown area, alongside longstanding interests in improvisation, actor training, and the meeting of architecture and movement in both staged and everyday contexts.

Meletti Yazbek earned his MA in 2022 from the Performing Arts program at the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP), specializing in Theatre Theory and Practice under the supervision of Dr. Luiz Fernando Ramos. His interdisciplinary master’s research bridged the performing and visual arts, focusing on the theatrical work of Brazilian visual artist Laura Vinci within the Mundana Companhia group, while also examining the scenic experiments of the Bauhaus and the performative turn of the 1960s and 1970s, including North American minimalism and postmodern dance.

He holds a BA in Performing Arts, with a concentration in Theatre Direction, from the University of São Paulo (2010), where he studied with leading Brazilian practitioners such as Antônio Araújo, Sérgio de Carvalho, Cibele Forjaz, and Maria Thais. As an actor, he joined the Experimental Center for Performing Arts (Núcleo Experimental de Artes Cênicas) at SESI São Paulo in 2015 under the direction of Miriam Rinaldi, and from 2018 to 2021 taught improvisation and actor training there using the Viewpoints technique, in addition to over a decade teaching theatre and movement in São Paulo middle and high schools. At the University of Pittsburgh, he taught Performing (in) the City — a course on performance and urban space — as instructor of record in Spring 2026, and received the PhD Teaching Award (2025–2026) for exceptional teaching in the Department of Theatre Arts.

His artistic training includes intensive programs at SITI Company (Suzuki/Viewpoints), the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq (Laboratoire d’Étude du Mouvement), and the Marfa Intensive in Viewpoints and Composition (2026), as well as workshops with international artists such as Thadd McQuade (USA), Torsten Blume (Germany), Francesca Della Monica (Italy), and Mario Biagini (Italy), and Brazilian artists including Janaína Leite, André Malosá, Mariana Muniz, Ricardo Neves, and Wagner Schwartz.

His recent creative work in Pittsburgh includes Voices of Place: A Pittsburgh Neighborhood Sound & Portrait Project (2026), an interdisciplinary project supported by a Duolingo Community Arts Grant; Jam Lab (2024), an interdisciplinary workshop pairing jazz and movement improvisation; and the video-art piece Pittsburgh as a Stage (2025). Earlier projects include acting in Tiros em Osasco (2016), directed by Yara de Novaes, and co-directing Loucas de Pedra (2016), which won awards for Best Production, Best Lead Actress, Direction, and Lighting Design at the ACESC Festival. In cultural management, he curated Projeto Encontros (2012–2013), a visual and performing arts initiative staged in São Paulo subway stations; served as executive producer of Bento Batuca (2018), directed by Luciana Ramanzini and Eduardo Leão and winner of the APCA Award for Best Children’s Musical; and was local executive producer for Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (2012), directed and performed by Robert Wilson.

Since May 2025, Meletti Yazbek has also collaborated as a theatre and dance critic with the onStage Pittsburgh project, writing about local productions, touring Broadway shows, and community theatre. His criticism extends his research interests by engaging performance as at once an artistic practice and a social, cultural, and urban event.