Translating theory into theater: overflow of content shaping forms not yet born
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Promoter: Brick De Bois
Translating theory into theater: overflow of content shaping forms not yet born investigates how philosophical, political and historical material becomes theatrical language. Starting from Peter Szondi's idea that new contents force new forms, the project looks back at almost twenty years of Rodrigo Batista's artistic and pedagogical practice as a living archive. It maps the three-phase methodology that has guided his work: Brainwashing, where references, discussions and in situ research create an excess of material; Cannibal Lab, where this excess is digested through bodies, improvisations, scores and fictional set-ups; and Word Becomes Flesh, where fragments become actions, texts, images and scenes. During this one-year start project, Batista will gather and analyse materials from past works and classes, create an initial glossary and architectural map of the method, test selected tools with bachelor students Drama – Play & Make at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, write a reflective essay, and a PhD proposal. The research asks what kinds of worldviews become visible when theatre is built from specific constellations of theory and politics, and how such tools can be shared between rehearsal room, classroom and future doctoral research.
Picture: KIDNAPPED: A Training Ground for the Brutality that is Coming. Theater-piece. Belgium, 2025. (c) Ana Francisco
Rodrigo Batista
Researcher
Rodrigo Batista is a Brazilian theatre director, performer and teacher based in Belgium. He holds a Bachelor and a Master in Theatre Directing from the University of São Paulo, and a Master at Das Theater Amsterdam. From 2007 to 2017 he was founder and artistic director of the São Paulo collective [pH2]: Estado de Teatro, developing productions and public seminars around biopolitics, tragedy, debt and insurrection. Since moving to Europe in 2017, his work has focused on far-right ideologies, explicit political language, necropolitics, decolonial disputes and capitalist realism, in projects such as ‘The Furious Rodrigo Batista’ and ‘KIDNAPPED: A Training Ground for the Brutality that is Coming’.
He teaches in the bachelor Drama - Play & Make trajectory at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp and has taught at LUCA, KASK, DAS Theater Amsterdam and other institutions in Europe and Brazil. His practice translates philosophical and political material into embodied theatrical procedures
Jef Van Den Abeele
Researcher
Jef Van Den Abbeele (he/him) is a sociologist, writer and researcher. He obtained a master in Political and Social Science at Ghent University. His master’s project on critical urban theory received the Marthe Versichelen Prize. In 2020/2022, he worked as researcher for the Centre for Sociological Research at KU Leuven.
In the research project 'Object-Oriented Choreographies: Rethinking Agency and Materiality in Dance' , Jef will theorise and articulate the knowledge emerging from the experiments, drawing on sociological perspectives.