Artists
About the artist
Vera Boitcova is a theatre director, dramaturg, artistic researcher, curator, queer performance artist, and political activist. Currently pursuing her doctoral degree at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Boitcova focuses her research on “otherness,” “belonging,” and “home searching” in performance dramaturgy, particularly through the experiences of queer immigrants and refugees. She holds an MA in Comparative Dramaturgy (Goethe University Frankfurt) and an MA in Theatre and Performance (Queen Mary University of London).
A long-time nomad, Boitcova has lived, worked, and performed in the UK, China, Germany, Spain, and Finland over the past 12 years. Her work has been featured at such venues and festivals as: Caisa Art Centre, Svenska Teatern (Finland), Frankfurt LAB, Stadttheater Gießen, Wiesbaden Biennale, Favoriten Festival (Germany), Meyerhold Centre, Sovremennik Theatre, Aleksandrinski Theatre (Russia), Camden People’s Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, Birmingham MAC, People’s Palace (the UK). In recent years, she has also curated and organized the annual Eve’s Ribs Festival of Feminist Art and QueerFest in Russia.
Boitcova has been recognized with the DAAD Prize for outstanding achievements in performance research (2022) and has received accolades for her plays Today My Cat Died and Neptune at the Lubimovka Festival of New Dramaturgy (2021-2023).
She has participated in artistic residencies across Europe, including PACT Zollverein in Germany, Saari in Finland, and Faberlull in Catalonia. Boitcova’s work often delves into queer narratives and political themes, examining identity and activism through multimedia, site-specific, and immersive formats. In her projects, she aims to bridge art and activism, focusing on creating spaces for underrepresented voices within the queer and immigrant communities.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Vera Boitcova
About the artist
Lucile Saada Choquet (she / adopted – FR) is a Brussels-based artist-researcher who develops her own artistic language from a feminist and decolonial perspective situated in the Global North. Trained as an actress at Arts2 (Belgium), she experiments with performance, dramaturgy and directing, questioning the porosity between the performing arts and the visual arts.
Defining herself as an artivist, Lucile Saada is concerned with social movements, their narratives and their various impacts on the bodies of minority groups. She creates forms that engage with political bodies and rethink collective imaginaries. Central to her work are the relationships between the intimate and the political, literature and archiving. With Jusque dans nos lits (Prix Maeterlinck for “best discovery” in the 2022-2023 season (Belgium)), she situates her work in the context of collective healing for colonial traumas.
She is currently conducting artistic research into international adoption: Who Adopts Whom? A (Re)search for Love and Justice from the experience of a transracial and transnational adoptee. With the SAADA STATION, a research space created within the Future Laboratory programme, she develops documentary and scenic processes to subvert the romanticized narrative of international adoption. She will continue her investigation by shifting her gaze and her practice with a series of return visits between Ethiopia and Belgium. This research is supported by the Fonds de la Recherche en Art/PDR-FRArt (2024-2026).
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Lucile Saada Choquet
About the artist
Nico Jongen is a theatre director and founder of the Barcelona-based performing arts company Ça marche. His artistic vision merges theatre, performance, movement, and visual arts, exploring the complexities and contradictions of contemporary life. Nico’s work often focuses on the intersection between craftsmanship and technique, seeking to disrupt conventional boundaries between professional and non-professional performance.
A key aspect of his practice is the involvement of non professional performers, such as children, elderly people, and members of marginalized communities. This approach allows him to develop pieces that not only challenge the traditional norms of stagecraft but also create a deeper connection with the local community. By centering on the experiences and embodied knowledge of these diverse groups, Nico’s work fosters inclusion and innovation, ensuring that his projects resonate on both a personal and societal level.
With Ça marche, Nico has led numerous projects that have been showcased at international festivals and venues, reflecting his commitment to creating work that is both locally grounded and globally relevant. Some venues and festivals with whom they have collaborated are Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels, Condeduque Centre for Contemporary Culture Madrid, Teatre Lliure Barcelona, Festival Grec Barcelona, CAMPO Gent, Graner creation centre for dance and live art Barcelona & TNT Festival Terrassa.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Nico Jongen
About the artist
Anne Sophie Kapsner [she/they] is a theatre director, writer and researcher based in Munich, Germany. Her interdisciplinary work is located in the border area of documentation, drama and pop aesthetics. The starting point is usually biographical events.
Anne studied Theatre Studies and Swedish in Munich and Stockholm [2010-2014] as well as directing at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts [2014-2020]. Afterwards Anne worked as a director’s assistent at Münchner Kammerspiele, where she also performed on stage [Heldenplatz; Dir: Falk Richter, 2021] and directed herself [ALLES GOLD, nichts glänzt; text based on Platonov by Tschechow]. Since 2022 Anne works as a freelance artist nationally and internationally, most recently from May till September 2024 with Falk Richter at Dramaten Stockholm.
Her works were shown among others at studio NAXOS Frankfurt, PATHOS Theatre Munich, Dschungel Wien and Staatstheater Mainz. She worked several years with the Frankfurt based group imaginary company on shows for all-age audience, mostly in cooperation with the Mousonturm Frankfurt. Anne is also interested in teaching: In 2023 she supervised a monologue work by drama student Lola Giwerzew at the Mozarteum Salzburg. Anne also works with young people, most recently in May 2024 with a group of schoolgirls on a political speaking performance on the german constitution [Walk of Democracy; public space Munich].
Anne’s art deals with identity and gender [LUST; 2020&2022], social structures and big feelings [Nur die Liebe zählt, haben sie gesagt; 2020-2023] - always with a queer feminist perspective. Humor and absurdity are particularly important in stage aesthetics.
Anne is currently preparing an audio walk about the jewish, activist, queer actress Therese Giehse for Münchner Kammerspiele with premiere in March 2025 and a novel adaption of „Outlawed“ by Anna North with premiere at Theaterhaus Jena in May 2025.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Anne Sophie Kapsner
About the artist
Sára Märc (they / them) is an art researcher and curator based in Prague, Czech Republic. They studied (alternative and puppet) acting at the Theatre Academy of Performing Arts, DAMU. Sára works at the intersection of curatorial care, research, and multidisciplinary art practice. They combine text, (moving) images, and performative moments. Focusing on more than human perspectives, their subjects dwell between speculative storytelling, alternative histories and presence exploration. Sára has been involved in several collaborative art projects. For example, they were part of the collective preparing the Polish pavilion for the Prague Quadrennial 2023 and worked as a personal assistant to artist Eva Koťátková and curator Hana Janečková for their exhibition for the Venice Biennale Arte 2024, Italy. Sára works as a curator and manager in etc. gallery, Prague. Currently, they are rehearsing a new theatre production for Studio Hrdinů (directed by Apolena Vanišová). They are also preparing a new work focusing on the history of animal trials and animal rights and protection for an exhibition at the National Gallery in Prague.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Sára Märc
About the artist
Carlota Matos (she / her) is a Portuguese theatre and performance artist working internationally with a focus on social change. Her practice addresses questions of identity, migration, and mental ill-health, in the form of documentary / experimental / participatory performances. She frequently collaborates with charities, artists from different disciplines, communities and people who are not necessarily trained or experienced performers. Carlota is the Facilitator for Firebird Theatre, a company of learning-disabled actors.
She is also a member of Migrants in Theatre, a movement to increase and improve migrant representation in UK theatre. Previous commissions include Projekt Europa and Counterpoints. In 2022, Carlota was awarded a DYCP grant from Arts Council England to scale up her work, explore creative access and research ethics in participatory arts. She developed and currently leads a project with migrant women in Bristol (UK) in partnership with the refugee charity Borderlands, which addresses language barriers and includes workshops, cultural trips, facilitation training, and the creation of A Taste of Belonging—a performative encounter that explores identity, gender roles, and food rituals across different cultures. Carlota’s project
POUR UNE VIE MEILLEURE, about Portuguese migration during the Salazar dictatorship, was selected for TalentLAB 2024 (Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg). She was recently in residency at O Rumo do Fumo in Lisbon developing a performance piece with her mother and MoYah, a hip-hop and afrofusion artist, delving into the personal, political and social impact of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Carlota Matos
About the artist
Ewa Mikuła is a Polish dramaturg and theatre director. She is a graduate of Theatre Directing with a specialization in Theatre Dramaturgy from the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków and Theatre Studies from the Jagiellonian University. Within the framework of documentary theatre, she explores everyday narratives, using them to reflect larger societal processes.
Mikuła made her debut alongside Piotr Froń with an autobiographical piece about her working-class heritage, titled Work, Work, published in the monthly magazine Dialog. She has worked as a dramaturg and playwright on multiple productions, including Swans, directed by S.T. Berg at the Korea International Accessible Dance Festival (KIADA) in Seoul in 2024. In Bratislava, Mikuła created the performance Adulthood, which focuses on alternative education methods, based on a three-year documentary process with Polish and Slovak youth (Divadlo Ludus, 2023). For the past two years, she has conducted artistic research on ethnic minorities and language as part of the European programme Future Laboratory, during residencies in Luxembourg, Romania, and France. Her latest project, the play TOĆ, explores the boundaries of speech in her native Silesian ethnic minority language, seen through the eyes of young female speakers.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Ewa Mikuła
About the artist
Odete works between performance, text, visual arts and music. She has presented her pieces in different formats and places, from exhibitions at galleries like Galeria Municipal de Lisboa (PT) to performances at Berghain Saule (DE), the National Theatre of Lisbon (PT) or even in public parks. Her work is obsessed with historiographical writing, using erotics and paranoia as two somatic ways of relating to the archival materials. She writes through her body, speculating biographies of historical characters through epidermic pleasures: fashion, personality, presence, fragrance, grace, sensibility. Her methodology is called “Paranoid Archaeology” and she has given talks about it in places like Brown University (USA), ESAD (PT), FBAUL (PT) and other institutions of education. She claims to be a bastard daughter of Lucifer, descending from the medieval practice of satanic pacts to alter one’s gendered body. For the past years she has been researching and working around building connection points between “effeminate” histories, from the baroque Castrati to the 19th century dandies to the eunuchs of antiquity.
She is part of The Cursed Assembly, a community investigating the intersections of magic, transsexuality, and historiography. As of now, she has been translating 19th century memoirs and exploring reading groups and potential gatherings at gardensand lakes to discuss the future of our political sphere.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Odete
About the artist
Maurin Ollès joined the Marseille Conservatory in 2009. He joined the Superior School of Dramatic Art of the Comédie de Saint-Étienne in 2012. In 2015 he played in Un beau ténébreux directed by Matthieu Cruciani, Letzlove Portrait Foucault directed by Pierre Maillet, Truckstop, directed by Arnaud Meunier and presented in Festival d’Avignon 2016. His show Jusqu’ici tout va bien on the issue of juvenile justice, is scheduled in Avignon in 2016. In 2018, he worked again with Arnaud Meunier in J’ai pris mon père sur mes épaules by Fabrice Melquiot and he participated in the regional “culture and health” system coordinated by La Comédie de Saint-Etienne. In this context, he created the show Pour l’amour de quoi? and runs in about thirty health establishments in Loire department. The 2019/2020 season, he takes over Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s Saigon tour. His latest creation, Vers le Spectre is currently on tour.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Maurin Ollès
About the artist
Elena Rabkina is Belarusian artist focused on photography and interactive art. Elena researches and documents the immaterial story of people, things and places, pays attention to the small real-life details and explores the current meaning of the mass culture. Her artworks have social commentary and reflect on agism, social inclusion, urbanism, ecology, mental health, migration, activism. Left Belarus in 2020 due to the political repressions, lived and worked in Odessa, Ukraine till the beginning of the war. Exhibited at National Center for Contemporary Arts (Belarus), SÜDBAHNHOF fotografische Werke (Germany), Mark Rothko Art Center (Latvia), Lviv Municipal Art Center (Ukraine), Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture (Ukraine) and other places. Apart from being an artist, Elena is a social activist, co-organizer of urban and art festival Vulica Brasil and mentor for social and art projects.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Elena Rabkina
About the artist
Simon Restino, born in 1991 in France, lives in Paris and Strasbourg. He studied at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London (2010-2013, 1st Degree Honor). There, his research focused closely on the performances of early humans in Upper Paleolithic caves. His painting extended into space, transforming into installations, writing, and performances.
At the Beaux-Arts in Paris-Cergy (2014-2016), he undertook a project titled Life and Death of Kaspar Hauser, centered on the enigmatic figure of Kaspar Hauser. He trained at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS) in the scenography section (Group 45, 2017-2020), which led him to design spaces, costumes, and objects for the productions of Simon-Élie Galibert. He contributed to the French School Pavilion at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space in 2019, under the artistic direction of Philippe Quesne.
In September 2019, he pursued his personal project and directed Kaspar Hauser 1828-1833 at the TNS, based on autobiographical texts by Kaspar Hauser, Pierre Michon, and Robert Walser. He collaborated on the scenography for the play Dekalog, directed by Julien Gosselin (2020-2021). Subsequently, he designed the scenography and costumes for « Nous entrerons dans la carrière » and « Un pas de chat sauvage », directed by Blandine Savetier (2021 and 2023), as well as the scenography for « Je n’ai pas le don de parler », based on Robert Walser texts, directed by Agathe Paysant (2023).
Currently, he is working on several projects as director, including (Kaspar Hauser), inspired by a sequence from François Truffaut’s film Fahrenheit 451, and ROBS, a performance inspired by his experience as a police extra in another artist’s production.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Simon Restino
About the artist
Urban innovator, architect of peace and interdisciplinary artist Teja Rot works at the intersection of community activism, urban design, sustainable architecture, environmental arts and technology and advocates user related solutions that enable environmentally friendly living. Teja’s research interests lie in the field of aesthetics and embodied perception in relation to games and play in nature. One of her core research topics is sustainable development of communities and places within current technological reality.
She is Evolutionary of Design Science Studio, run by Buckminster Fuller Institute. She is CEC ArtsLink International Fellow 2023 and Visiting Scholar at UCSD Design Lab within the scope of World Design Capital San Diego/Tijuana 2024. She is Emerging Urban Leaders Fellow (run by the Salzburg Global Seminar and World Urban Parks) where she started to conduct research on urban green zones. She is Rotary Peace Fellow, and she completed the training at Rotary Peace Centre at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Mateja’s recent urban games include PLAY:CES, featured at Fusion: Urban Games Festival Matera, Sprites of Meadowlands, a game exploration of green spaces in the city and Flækingar, a game set in Ísafjörður, Iceland. Additionally, her work has been featured at Regenaissance Salon: Art Inspiring Regenerative Future at Art Basel in Miami (collaboration with Future Cities/Buckminster Fuller Institute), exhibition and salon Making the Invisible Visible: virtual, immersive artist showcase to inspire planetary cooperation.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Teja Rot
About the artist
Giulia Sangiorgio is a director from Bari, currently based in Milan. She studied Literature and Linguistics with a special focus on Theatre and later earned a master’s degree in Performing Arts and Multimedia Production from the University of Bari. Until 2018, she worked for four years in Puglia with the Diaghilev Theatre Company. Before leaving Puglia, she made a documentary on the concept of “home”, centered on experiences of immigration and emigration. She then moved to Milan to study Directing at the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi, where she graduated with honours in November 2021.
In 2022, she co-founded the theatre company CORPORA, with whom she created three performances: Corpora, 88 frequenze, and Zeta 4. Corpora, which inspired the company’s name, explores the difficulty of processing grief in a society that has lost its rituals. 88 frequenze uses the story of Hedy Lamarr as a starting point to explore the theme of identity. In Zeta 4, young rappers wrote songs inspired by interviews with elderly residents of a non-central neighborhood in Milan, addressing issues of gentrification and social equality. She created two musical operettas for children with the Milan Symphony Orchestra. For BookCity, in collaboration with Gallimard and Salani Editore, she directed L’uomo che piantava gli alberi, inspired by Jean Giono’s book. For Milan Fashion Week, she directed the fashion show Lights, Camera, Action! by Antonio Marras.
She also directed the Olivetti exhibition Podium 16 at the ADI Museum in Milan. She collaborates with Piccolo Teatro di Milano on audience development projects and as an assistant director with renowned directors such as Massimo Popolizio (M il figlio del secolo), Mario Martone (Romeo e Giulietta), and Claudio Longhi (Ho paura torero).
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Giulia Sangiorgio
About the artist
Ruxandra Simion is a playwright and cultural manager based in Bucharest, Romania. Ruxandra uses satire, musical theatre, and community-engaged art to explore subjects such as climate change, labour, migration, housing issues, and the intersectionality between class and gender. Her work is multifaceted, encompassing writing and staging theatre plays, creating opera librettos and performative texts, developing dramaturgical and digital game scripts, and facilitating numerous workshops using Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.
Her latest work is in collaboration with Replika Theatre in Bucharest. She worked closely with a group of juvenile inmates at a Romanian Detention Center, using participatory theatre methods to explore the experiences of the inmates. Drawing on interviews conducted with them, Ruxandra is cowriting a play that sheds light on the detention system and its paradoxes for a show that will have the premiere in the winter of 2025. She also has curatorial and production experience, and, as the co-founder of Rhea, a platform for interdisciplinary artistic explorations, focused on the performing arts and cinematography production and innovation, she is engaged in the independent Romanian cultural sector as a cultural manager
and producer.
Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Ruxandra Simion
About the artist
Celine was born in the suburbs of Paris. During her childhood, she trained as a ballet and modern jazz dancer at the Conservatoire de Creteil. After studying law in France and the UK, she moved to Luxembourg in 2012 where she started her office career as a jurist in academia. In pursuit of her true passion, she got involved in the local improv scene and started working with Valérie Bodson at the Conservatoire d’Esch-sur-Alzette. After a brief – and ultimately beneficial – existential crisis, she quit her legal career in 2018 and turned completely towards theater. Celine followed a one-year training in Forum Theater & Theater of the Oppressed techniques. She was in charge of the actor training for the collective creation Tous Migrants bringing on stage refugees and Luxemburgish residents. Since then, she has played in theater, improv and movie productions mainly in Luxembourg.
Due to personal reasons, Céline Camara decided to leave the Future Laboratory project.
