Making Performance

an intensive making laboratory for theatre, dance & performance artists

France | April 30–May 6, 2026

Making Performance is a week-long intensive for artists and practice-led researchers who seek dedicated time, space, and mentorship to make and materially advance a performance.

  • Arrive with a project, idea, or line of inquiry

  • Leave with newly generated material, sharpened form, and clear next steps

  • Select the combination of structured workshops, individual mentorship, and shared practice and group reflection sessions to best advance your work

Workshops Include

  • Performance Making: experiment, dismantle habits, reimagine how performance is made

  • Practice-based writing: structure, articulate, and develop portfolios,, artists statements, research exegesis, or dissertation components

  • Embodied Methods: explore time, place, proximity, site, and the body as generative material

  • Professional Development: focused on the professional development skills you specifically want to hone (marketing, funding, networking) and next steps for developing, producing and documenting your chosen project.

The program takes place in a restorative and peaceful 20-acre woodland retreat in the southwest of France. Your program fee includes all workshops, 1-1 mentorship, 6 nights accomodation, 3 vegetarian meals per day, access to studio space and library/reading room,  optional yoga and creative movement sessions, sauna, and time to rest—balancing intensity and rigor with care, renewal, and creative camaraderie.

Artists and Professors Dr. Helen Paris and Dr. Raegan Truax mentor each participant closely to develop, hone, and deepen both project and practice.

Participants can expect

  • Substantial development of a specific performance project, including new material, clearer form, and articulated next steps

  • A set of practical, generative tools for your current project and to support a sustainable path for continued work in making performance 

  • A personalized professional development plan and timeline for developing, producing, and documenting your chosen project

  • An expanded network of international and intergenerational performance artists and collaborators

  • An ongoing mentoring relationship with Helen and Raegan

Focused work includes

  • Organising and fleshing out ideas

  • Composition and dramaturgy

  • Audience, space, and site considerations

  • Practical workshopping of material

By the end of the week you will have

  • Generated and refined material through tailored workshops and masterclasses

  • Developed your project in a non-competitive way within an artist-focused pedagogy intent on nurturing the individual needs, voice, and aesthetic of each artist

  • Received two, 1-1 mentoring sessions for in-depth feedback

  • Shared works-in-progress and reworked core ideas in a constructive, convivial environment

  • Completed an individual mentoring session focused on professional skills (funding, producing, marketing, networking, documentation)

  • Collaborated and connected with a committed cohort of artists within the immersive

  • Shared work with a public audience (optional) at a gallery or theatre space in our local village 

  • Joined the Creative Body Institute artist network, with invitations to future creative work sessions, workshops, artist residencies, exhibitions and events with opportunities and possibilities to share your work

Making Performance is ideal for

  • Theatre, dance, and performance artists developing a project

  • Artists seeking an intensive period of supported making and composition

  • Practice-based researchers working across performance and writing

  • Artists wanting to generate material, sharpen form, and clarify next steps

Applications ask participants to share a specific project, line of inquiry, or body of material (at any stage) and describe how they will engage fully in this intensive, collaborative process.

How to Apply

Deadline: 18 February 2026

To apply, please review the process, timeline, and what the fee includes, (all below) then submit the online application form (scroll to bottom for application).

We look forward to learning about you and your work!

Making Performance takes place at a peaceful 20-acre woodland retreat in the southwest of France, nestled just outside the medieval village of Saint Antonin-Noble-Val. Surrounded by oak forests and including indoor and outdoor studio spaces for your creative work, it’s a sanctuary designed for focusing on your performance project while being deeply nourished.

Meet Your Instructors

Helen Paris, PhD in Theatre & Performance

Professor of Performance and Writing, Creative Body Institute
Artistic Director, Curious

Dr. Helen Paris is an internationally recognised artist-scholar working at the intersection of devised theatre and performance, autobiography, and contemporary performance making. Her work explores audience–performer relationships, intimacy, and social and environmental justice. Helen is widely known for her world-leading contributions to practice-as-research pedagogy, articulated in her seminal books Performing Proximity (Palgrave, 2014) and Devising Theatre and Performance: Curious Methods (University of Chicago Press / Intellect, 2021).From 2011–2018, Helen served as Professor of Performance Making in Stanford University’s Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, following her role as founder and director of the MA in Contemporary Performance Making at Brunel University, London. Helen has additionally held Visiting Professorships and Artist Residencies across the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia, with recent appointments at Université Grenoble Alpes and Brasenose College, Oxford. Her performance work with Curious has been presented internationally, including at the Sydney Opera House, London’s Cultural Olympiad, and the Guling Street Avant-Garde Theatre in Taipei.

Helen brings her expertise in practice-as-research to guide participants in articulating, structuring, and developing their projects, supporting both embodied and written work. In Making Performance, she mentors artists to refine material with clarity, rigor, and creative insight.

Raegan Truax, PhD in Performance & Dance

Professor of Embodied Practice, Creative Body Institute
Founder; Executive Director

Dr. Raegan Truax is a performance artist, choreographer, and scholar whose durational performance and movement practices bend and susupend traditional time structures, to explore relationality, sensation, and queer-feminist ethics. Her long-form works—Citation (37 hours), Sloughing (28 days, multi-site), Underway: En Cours, and Stay in Place (76 days)—create immersive, visceral environments, perform archives, and advance innovative methods in artistic research.

Raegan is also a leading voice in advancing artistic scholarship, experimenting with performative writing and creating unique methodologies to disseminate practice-led-research. Her recent publications include: Becoming Sea-swallowed: Sarah Cameron Sunde’s 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea (Technoetic Arts, 2025) A Period Piece that Endures: Twenty-eight Reflections on Sloughing (Performance Research, 2023), Durational Performance and Queer Refrain (Platform Journal of Theatre and Performing Arts, 2022), and Bleeding Pulsing Biding Time: Durational Performance and Phenomenological Unmuting in the Work of MC Coble (Routledge, 2025). 

As a mentor, Raegan works closely with participants to generate, structure, and expand material, offering feedback, embodied strategies, and practical tools to bring projects to the next stage while fostering presence and experimentation in both the making and the writing/dissemination of artistic research.

Application Process & Timeline

The application for MAKING PERFORMANCE is currently Open.

Deadline: 18 February 2026

We are reviewing applications on a rolling basis every WEDNESDAY.

We encourage you to apply before the final deadline to ensure your performance project receives full consideration.

Application Timeline

Feb 4: First review, accepted artistss to confirm participation by Feb 11

Feb 11: Second review , accepted artists to confirm participation by Feb 18

Feb 1811:59 PM EST: Applications will close

Feb 25: Final Notifications of Acceptance or waitlist

Program Fee

€2750 individual room, all meals & workshops

€2250 shared room, all meals & workshops

What’s Included

  • 6 nights Accommodation in private or shared room

  • All meals: Vegetarian cuisine lovingly prepared with organic, seasonal ingredients. Food during your retreat is part of the creative nourishment.

    • Breakfast: A generous buffet—think bouillie d'avoine (oat porridge), fresh baked bread, local cheese, homemade jams, fruit, and eggs.

    • Lunch & Dinner: A colourful spread of hot and cold dishes served buffet-style and family style on alternating days. Local wine is offered with dinner.

    • All-day snacks: Teas, coffee, fruit, and biscuits are always available.

    • Local wine is available and offered through our “honor bar” & you can also pick up anything you desire in the local village and at the tantalizing farmer’s market.

  • Guided workshops and structured feedback sessions on your project

  • 1-1 mentoring with Helen Paris and Raegan Truax

  • Access to indoor studio space and open-air studio

  • Cozy writing library with tea and music

  • Outdoor Pool (weather permitting)

  • Sauna

  • All writing and creative wokshops held in a beautifully restored barn with high ceilings and exposed beams or outdoors in our surrounding fields and nature.

  • You have access to 20 acres of woodland, and all common areas

  • Morning guided creative movement, warm-up, and breathwork sessions

  • Development of your performance project (individual and group)

  • Several hikes and the village of Saint Antonin-Noble-Val are reachable by foot. Bicycles are also available to borrow.

Upon acceptance: €350 program deposit due to confirm participation

*€350 non-refundable deposit is deducted from the total fee

Due to the program start in April, full payment is required on or before March 15

Getting to our location

  • Performance Making takes place at “A Place to Be Well” Retreat Center

  • The nearest airport is Toulouse airport

  • The nearest train station is Caussade Train Station

    • We arrange a time for group pick ups and drop offs to/from the airport or train station on the day of arrival and departure.