Mia van Leeuwen

Mia van Leeuwen practices the body of performance to explore wide-ranging themes (fandom, whiteness, death, religion, pop culture) – while playfully blurring the lines between theatre and visual art. Queering, juxtaposing, unsettling, disturbing, re-mixing, winking, collaborating, baring process, and making strange are some of the actions that inform the devising of her various projects. Mia is currently an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge and visitor on Treaty 7 Territory, Canada.

Mia's current research practice How to Raise a Ghost is a tentacular project that explores arts-based research as a mode of inquiry on the vast subject of death. The work seeks multi-perspectivism and engages in death studies research, collaborative artistic practice, ritual, play, contemplation, and death dialogues with a variety of artists about their relationship to death.

Research Interests

Postdramatic theatre, theatre of images, physical theatre, devised theatre, tanztheatre, contemporary approaches to adaptation, performance art, queer theory, feminist theory, decolonizing practices, research-creation, arts-based research, practice-led research, movement, dance, viewpoints, yoga, qigong, meditation, walking, contemplation, ritual, object theatre, tabletop theatre, puppetry, spectacle, photography, wunderkammers, peepshows, burlesque, tango, lip-sync, drag, Pochinko Clown, Grand-Guignol, DIY design, death studies, the macabre, religious theatre, 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.

Mia was the co-artistic director (alongside Ian Mozdzen) of the notorious – out of line theatre – founded in Winnipeg, Canada (2003-2016). The company created 10 original works, various shorter projects, and toured nationally. (Some of the best days of my life!) 

Mia’s recent 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). Her 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).