Mia van Leeuwen

About

Mia practices the body of performance to explore wide-ranging themes while playfully blurring the lines between theatre, ritual, and visual art. Collaging, remixing, mashing, queering, unsettling, haunting, winking, collaborating, guiding, and making strange are some of the actions that inform the devising of her various projects. Her work with the experimental out of line theatre (Winnipeg 2003-2016) as well as her independent productions, have toured nationally and internationally. Mia is also the co-founder, organizing member, and producer of the Waking Death Arts & Culture Event Series that took place in Lethbridge, Canada in the fall of 2023.

Interests: theatre of images, devised theatre, Tanztheater, performance art, ritual, performing objects, queer theory, feminist theory, decolonizing practices, death studies, research-creation, arts-based research, practice-led research, adaptation, viewpoints, yoga, qigong, meditation, walking, contemplation, spectacle, photography, wunderkammers, peepshows, burlesque, tango, lip-sync, Drag, Pochinko Clown, Grand Guignol, d.i.y. design, religious theatre, ghosts, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Madonna Ciccone, fandom, pop-culture, stand-up comedy, the Tarot, the ineffable, intuition, weirdness, altered states, effigies, dream-logic, collage, bricolage, assemblage, stream of consciousness …

Recent Publications:

Rediscovering Roswitha’s Sapientia with Object Theatre
By Mia van Leeuwen and Stefano Muneroni
Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 29, Issue 2

Process and Relationship: A Walking-Dialogue
By Sandra Cowan and Mia van Leeuwen
Assemblage, Inquiry, and Common Work – Journal of Critical Library & Information Studies

Recent Creative Activity:

Waking Death Arts & Culture Event Series (2023)

Contemplations on death, impermanence, grief, and ghosts can deepen an understanding of our intertwined livingness. The Waking Death Arts & Culture Event Series focused on these evocative themes, bringing together artists, guest speakers, and audiences to reflect on our shared mortality while engaging with the unique resources and spaces that arts & culture can provide. Events took place in Lethbridge (Alberta) at Casa, The Galt Museum, The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, and the University of Lethbridge throughout September 9 to October 28, 2023, and were accessible to the public with generous support from the Canada Council of the Arts, City of Lethbridge, Allied Arts Council, Casa, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the University of Lethbridge.

The Late Night Ghost Show (2023)

What are you haunted by? Have you ever been ghosted? How do we honour the death of relationships? What do you do with the grief that lives in your body? How do we make room for play, or laughter, in a time of crisis? These are just some of the questions that Mia has been haunting as part of the evolving performance that is The Late Night Ghost Show, one of the many projects housed under the shroud of How to Raise a Ghost.

A permutation of the work was presented on October 20. 2023. as part of the Waking Death Arts & Culture Event Series with generous support from the University of Lethbridge, Allied Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and creation support from the Alberta Foundation of the Arts.

Sapientia, Director
Produced by Scapegoat Carnivale Theatre (New York International Puppet Festival, 2023)
Produced by Scapegoat Carnivale Theatre (Centaur Theatre's Wildside Festival, Montreal, 2019 and Mainline Theatre, Montreal, 2018)
Produced by Theatre Outré (Lethbridge, 2018)

Destroy She Said, Director and co-creator
Independent Production, (Winnipeg 2018)

Postcolonial Postcards, Director/Facilitator
Produced by Dalnavert Museum, (Winnipeg 2017)

Mona Lisa Must Ache, Performer and co-creator
Produced by out of line theatre, (Winnipeg 2016)