van Leeuwen, Mia

maker. director. performer. collaborator. producer. facilitator. guide. writer. ghost.

Mia (she/her) practices the body of performance to explore wide-ranging themes, playfully blurring the lines between theatre and visual art, and delves into subject material with vigour and imagination. Altering perspective, baring process, queering, unsettling, combining different forms, making strange, fragmenting time, and juxtaposing imagery are some of the actions that inform the making of her various projects.

Mia is the co-artistic director (alongside Ian Mozdzen) of the experimental - out of line theatre - founded in Winnipeg (2003-2016). The company created 10 original works, various shorter projects, and toured nationally.

Mia's recent and independent ventures include Sapientia (Montreal 2019, Lethbridge 2018, Winnipeg 2015), Destroy She Said (Winnipeg 2018), Postcolonial Postcards (Dalnavert Museum, Winnipeg 2017), and White Bread (Edmonton 2016 and Antwerp, Munich, Innsbruck, Belgrade, 2014). Mia's object theatre adaptation of Sapientia - a martyr play written in the 10th century by history's first (known) female playwright Hrotsvitha of Gandershiem, won two 2018 METAs (Montreal English Theatre Awards) for Outstanding Independent Production and Outstanding Contribution to Theatre (produced by Scapegoat Carnivale Theatre, Montreal).

research interests: postdramatic theatre, theatre of images, physical theatre, devised theatre, tanztheatre, object theatre, feminist theatre, dark comedy, play, creative movement, viewpoints, yoga, qigong, meditation, contemplation, ritual, tango, Pochinko Clown, Grand Guignol, lip-sync, D.I.Y. design, Death Studies, the macabre, religious theatre, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Madonna Ciccone, pop-culture, the Tarot, the ineffable, intuition, weirdness, queerness, altered states, effigies, derangement, cognitive dissonance, dream-logic, spectacle, collage, bricolage, assemblage, stream of consciousness, free association …