Edith Cassiers

Edith Cassiers obtained a Bachelor in Dutch - Theatre, Film and Literature Studies and a Master’s degree in Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Antwerp. In 2010, she was assistant-dramaturge for Jan Fabre for the production Prometheus Landscape II. She has also worked as a researcher for Laboratorium/Troubleyn which studies artistic methodologies of ‘the performer of the 21st century’, including the acting method of Jan Fabre. Currently, she is a fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and is preparing a PhD within the project “The Didascalic Imagination” about contemporary theatrical notebooks.

Frederik Le Roy

Frederik Le Roy is currently a doctor-assistant at the department of Art, music and theatre studies at Ghent University. He is a member of Studies in Performing Arts and Media (Ghent University) and the Research Centre for Visual Poetics (University of Antwerp). He holds degrees in Philosophy (Catholic University of Leuven, 2003) and Performance Studies and Film (Ghent University, 2005). In 2012 he obtained his doctoral degree at Ghent University with a dissertation entitled Verknoopte tijd, verfrommelde geschiedenis (Entangled Time, Crumpled History). Inspired by the philosophy of history of Walter Benjamin, this research dealt with the politics of memory of performative strategies (re-enactment, historical montage, testimony) in historic and contemporary (cultural) performance. He publishes on these themes. Besides his academic research, he was a theory coach at the dance school P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels, since 2012), a freelance editor and is the content coordinator of the Master in Drama at KASK / School of arts.

Johan Callens

Johan Callens (b.1957) is Professor of English at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and has published books on Anglophone theatre in the Low Countries (Acte(s) de présence, 1996), Jack Richardson (Double Binds, 1993) and Sam Shepard (From Middleton and Rowley’s “Changeling” to Sam Shepard’s “Bodyguard”: A Contemporary Appropriation of a Renaissance Drama, 1997; Dis/Figuring Sam Shepard, 2009). Essays of his have appeared, amongst others, in Text and Performance Quarterly,Theatre Research International, The Journal for Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Modern Drama, The Drama Review, Theatre Journal and PAJ: A Journal of Performance & Art. He edited a double issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on Shepard, Between the Margin and the Centre (1998), as well as the essay collections The Wooster Group and Its Traditions (2004), Crossings: David Mamet’s Work in Different Genres and Media (2009), and more recently Dramaturgies in the New Millenium: Relationality, Performativity, and Potentiality (2014, with Katharina Pewny and Jeroen Coppens).

Luk Van den Dries

Luk Van den Dries (b.1957) is Full Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). His research deals with contemporary theatre, with a focus on postdramatic theatre . He wrote extensively on Jan Fabre, one of the main examples of postdramatic theatre in Flanders. He wrote also on the representation of the body in contemporary theatre and co-edited three books on this topic. Other important research topic is the creative process: the dynamics between director’s notebook and rehearsal process. He was editor of the theatre magazine Etcetera, organiser of the Flemish-Dutch Theatrefestival, president of the jury of the Flemish-Dutch Theatrefestival and president of the Flemish Arts Council. He co-founded the postgraduate academy in theatre a.pass and the arts centre for starting theatre artists in Antwerp De Theatermaker. His latest bookpublications are Thomas Crombez, Luk Van den Dries (ed.) Mass Theatre in Interwar Europe (Kadoc, 2014), Luk Van den Dries: Het geopende lichaam. Verzamelde opstellen over Jan Fabre (De Bezige Bij, 2014), Thomas Crombez, Jelle Koopmans, Frank Peeters, Luk Van den Dries, Karel Van Haesebrouck: Theater. Een Westerse geschiedenis. (Lannoo Campus, 2015).

Sara Jansen

Sara Jansen holds degrees in Japanese Studies (K.U. Leuven) and Performance Studies (New York University). She was also a Monbushô student at Osaka University for Foreign Studies and a Japan Foundation Fellow at Waseda University. Currently, she is a researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and University of Antwerp (UA). Her main areas of research are dance and performance theory, dramaturgy, contemporary dance, and Japanese performing arts. Her doctoral dissertation explores the intersections between choreography and history in the context of the Japanese avant-garde of the 1960s and 70s.

In 2002, Sara Jansen was the assistant-curator of the exhibition Rosas XX, and editor of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas (La Renaissance du Livre, 2002). Since then, she has worked as a (dance) dramaturg with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Fumiyo Ikeda and Tim Etchells, Yukiko Shinozaki and Heine Avdal (Deepblue/fieldworks), Un Yamada, KVS and Transquinquennal, Johanne Saunier, and Moya Michael, among others.

Thomas Crombez

Thomas Crombez (b. 1978) is lecturer in Philosophy of Art and Theatre History at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp), and at Sint Lucas Antwerp. As a member of the research group ArchiVolt, he focuses on the history of avant-garde and performance art. Further interests are new methodologies for doing research, such as digital text collections and data visualization.

Crombez also works as a researcher at the Research Centre for Visual Poetics of the University of Antwerp. At the same institution, he initiated the Platform for Digital Humanities.

Recent books include Het Antitheater van Antonin Artaud (2008), The Locus of Tragedy (2009), and Mass Spectacle in Interwar Europe (2014).

Personal website: Zombrec

Timmy De Laet

Timmy De Laet (b. 1983) is a junior researcher at the University of Antwerp and the Research Centre for Visual Poetics. He had an actor’s training at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, holds a Master’s and an Advanced Master’s Degree in Theatre Studies from the University of Antwerp, and studied Dance Theory at the Freie Universität Berlin. He is currently working as a researcher on the project “The Didascalic Imagination” (funded by FWO – Research Foundation Flanders). He is also completing his PhD-dissertation, titled “Re-inventing the Past. Re-enactment in Contemporary Dance and Performance Art.”