FELLOWS 2026

Awa is an Iranian dance artist based in Berlin. Her practice moves through embodiment, visibility, and the politics of disappearance, often questioning dominant expectations of presence and spectacle. Through performance, she creates subtle spaces for collective reflection—where stillness, listening, and withdrawal become quiet gestures of resistance and ways of imagining coexistence.

Femi Adebajo is a Nigerian choreographer, theatre director, and cultural organizer based in Lagos. His artistic practice explores the relationship between body, memory, ritual, and contemporary life through movement, film, and performance. Drawing from traditional forms and experimental choreography, his work engages themes such as identity, climate issues, power, migration, and the social realities of urban life. He is the founder of Choreo Cinema World, festival director of Artist Crossroad Festival, and co-founder and artistic director of the Future of Dance Company.

Gisemba Ursula’s artistic practice finds its expression in performative texts, immersive audio works, and experimental films. Taking as a starting point the deconstruction of how Black African femininity is represented, her work explores experimental forms and critical narrative methodologies. A SONG FOR ALICE: SOLDIER’S LAMENT (SPIELART Festival Munich, 2023) was created during Gisemba Ursula's residency at Villa Waldberta as part of the City of Munich's artist-in-residence programme in 2023, which led to her collaboration with Netzwerk Münchner Theatertexter*innen (NMT), a creative partnership that continues to this day. 

Hamzeh Abu Alganam is a Jordanian theatre director and performer working at the intersection of psychophysical practice and contemporary devised theatre.  His work explores the body as a dramaturgical instrument, expressing psychological states through movement, rhythm and spacial composition and engaging themes of tension, confinement, and collective presence. Trained in psychophysical methodologies at the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy, he is currently completing his BA in Performing Arts at the University of Jordan and is undertaking an internship with the Goethe-Institut. 

Melisa Stocco is a playwright, dramaturg, researcher, and university lecturer based in Esquel, Argentina. She is a founding member of the independent theatre collective El Jardín Teatro Laboratorio, and serves as one of the executive directors of the collective’s theatre festival, Jardín Teatro Fest. Her practice unfolds at the intersection of artistic creation, community-rooted processes, and research. Her theatre work engages questions of social memory, gender, the more-than-human, and environmental justice as interconnected artistic and political concerns. 

Pavlo Koval is a Ukrainian theatre-maker, playwright, director and producer based in Kyiv. He works in the independent theatre scene, focusing on psychological and experimental forms. 
His artistic practice explores themes of war, memory, trauma and silence, drawing from the lived experience of wartime Ukraine. Through minimalist and emotionally precise storytelling, he creates performances that invite reflection, dialogue and collective experience. Pavlo is the founder and artistic director of Bentegy Theatre and works as a producer at the Experimental Theatre Club NASHi.

Paweł Bernadowski is an independent theatre maker — actor, director, playwright, and facilitator of creative processes. He graduated in Acting at the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków. In his work, he focuses on the tragicomic aspects of everyday life. He primarily works within non-fiction theatre and is interested in the invisible systems that quietly organize our lives. Currently, much of his attention is devoted to speculation — treated as a fully fledged creative material. 

Ronja Oehler (born in 1998 in Werdau) studied acting at the HMT Leipzig and has been a member of the ensemble at Theater Bielefeld since the 2023/24 season.  She works closely with the mask theater group Compania Sincara. In her own work, she explores her socialization as a “post-reunification child” and the upheavals of 1989–90.   This led, among other things, to the piece “Um unsere Träume ein Bauzaun” for Theater der Zeit. In 2024, she was invited to participate with Gesa Schermuly at the Begehungen art festival in Chemnitz. 

Sarah Almoneem is a Syrian dancer, choreographer, and performer based in Beirut, Lebanon. A graduate of the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus (2019), she works between Damascus and Beirut while pursuing a Master’s degree in Actor Training at the Lebanese University. Her works include “There” (2023) and “Between the Teeth” (2025). Rooted in contemporary dance, her practice moves between choreography and performance, exploring the body as a political and emotional archive. Through movement, she investigates questions of presence, memory, and belonging.

Shauna Harris is a mixed race Irish-Jamaican actor, writer and creative facilitator based in Dublin, Ireland working across theatre, screen, youth and community spaces. Shauna has a particular interest in creative work that intersects with advocacy due to her background in social justice studies. The thread throughout her work is visibility and connection.  

Born in 2000 and based in Chengdu and Beijing, Ting Huyan is a dramaturg, director, performer, writer, and facilitator. She develops long-term socially engaged theatre projects with marginalized communities affected by structural educational inequality. From a feminist perspective, she understands theatre as a space for collective care and resistance, working with themes such as gendered labour and undervalued care work. In 2024, she co-founded WhichWitch, a feminist theatre collective initiated by four Generation Z artists in Chengdu. 

Youtaek Hwang is a creative director from the Republic of Korea. He explores new horizons of performance at the intersection of performing arts, technology, and cultural planning. Currently leading the multidisciplinary arts collective “THE STRANGER”, he continues his work on post-theatrical forms, technological convergence, and borders. Since 2021, he has been researching the Korean DMZ and the US-Mexico border, working on various forms of national boundaries.