Eric Villanueva Dela Cruz is a transdisciplinary performance maker, educator, and dramaturg from the Philippines whose work bridges performance, pedagogy, and research. He is the founder and Creative Navigator of TAXI Theater, an independent platform for immersive and sensorial performance-making that develops projects around ecology, disability, care, and cultural memory.

For over two decades, Eric has created multisensory, participatory performances that invite audiences to encounter stories through sound, touch, scent, taste, and embodied presence. His works include Mulagat (a horror experiment in complete darkness), Tacloban (a performative dinner on climate grief), Musta? (an immersive journey from depression to mindfulness), and Ang Parangal (a socially engaged participatory performance).

Through TAXI’s Talyer Program, he designed the Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop (CSAW), which evolved into Relational Sensory Dramaturgy (RSD)—an approach to performance-making grounded in awe, curiosity, and ethical sensory engagement. Under this program, he is also developing Ganap na Pagganap: Acting for Filipinos, a culturally rooted actor-training framework informed by the Stanislavsky System and the Stella Adler technique, which he is permitted to teach in the Philippines.

A senior artist-teacher with the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), Eric has also taught at University of the Philippines Diliman and De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, where he chaired the Theater Arts Program. Internationally, he has worked and presented across Asia, Europe, and North America, with research published in Theatre and Performance Design, Performance Research, and Pedagogias Invisibles.

In 2025, Eric was named Artist-in-Residence at the Harvard University Asia Center. His current long-term project, Sinag Lahi, explores endangered Filipino foodways, beginning with Asin Tibuok, a rare salt-making tradition from Bohol.

Eric believes that performance begins in the senses and grows into connection—with one another, with memory, and with the world we share.