In their research Performance Repertoire Art, Marieke & Sophia, in collaboration with Rodrigo Batista, cross bourgeois drama with performance art. Using performance techniques, they explore ways to disrupt the identity-driven tendencies of repertoire. How can we (re)discover the strange in a form that has since become familiar – but was once revolutionary itself? How can we make repertoire, and the roles it assigns us, not merely relevant, but real?
Marieke Schraepen (°1995, BE) and Sophia Bauer (°1994, DE) are actresses and theatre makers. They met during their drama studies at KASK School of Arts (Ghent) and have formed an artistic duo since 2022. Their collaboration stems from a shared desire to approach difficult subjects with humor, vulnerability, and radical imagination. In Guilty of Love (2022), together with Mats Vandroogenbroeck, they explored the cultural fascination with sexual violence; the performance was staged at, among others, TAZ, KVS, and Auawirleben (CH). In Motherbaby (2024), with Kristien De Proost, they dissected the ideal of motherhood through song.
Both are also active as performers in the work of others. Marieke performed in Een Lola (Compagnie Cecilia), Giants (Werktoneel), and Fun Loving Humans (Kopergietery). Sophia appeared in De Dieren (Geert Belpaeme), Operette (Tibaldus), and Up Your Ass (Lieselot Siddiki & Nona Demey Gallagher).
Rodrigo Batista is a Brazilian theatre maker and lecturer, based in Brussels and Amsterdam. He studied theatre directing in São Paulo and completed his master’s degree at DAS Theatre Amsterdam in 2019. Since 2007, he has been developing work around macro-political themes such as biopolitics, colonialism, debt, strikes, necropolitics, and the Alt-Right. His performances combine raw physicality with explicitly political language and have been shown in the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and Bulgaria. In Brazil, he worked for over ten years with his group [pH2]: Estado de Teatro, and was active in social art projects in São Paulo. In Europe, he also teaches, including at KASK and the Conservatory in Antwerp.
