Making Performance

an intensive making laboratory for theatre, dance & performance artists

Portugal | May 16 – May 30, 2026

Making Performance is a two week 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.

Making Performance takes place in a restorative and peaceful 76 hectares at a nature retreat in the heart of Arrábida’s natural park. Your program fee includes all workshops, 1-1 mentorship, 13 nights accommodation, vegetarian meals, access to indoor and outdoor creative spaces and reading/writing rooms, optional yoga and creative movement sessions, pool and lounge deck (weather permitting), and a unique balance of intensity, rigor, support, 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 March 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!

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 March 2026

We review 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 25: First review, accepted artists confirm participation by March 4

March 4: Second review, accepted artists confirm participation by March 11

March 11: Third review, accepted artists to confirm participation by March 18

March 18: 11:59 PM EST: Applications will close, apply by March 18

March 25: Final Notifications of Acceptance or waitlist

Program Fee

€ 2000 individual room with en suite bathroom, all meals & workshops

€1475 shared room (2 artists total) with en suite bathroom, all meals & workshops

What’s Included

  • 15 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— oat porridge, fresh baked bread, local cheese, fruit, and eggs.

    • Lunch & Dinner: A seasonal spread of hot and cold dishes served buffet-style and family style on alternating days.

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

    • Local wine is available and offered through our “honor bar” & you can also bring drinks to share from your region or pick up anything you desire in the local village.

  • Guided workshops and structured feedback sessions on your project

  • 1-1 mentoring with Helen Paris and Raegan Truax

  • Cozy reading and writing areas with tea

  • Outdoor Pool and lounge area (weather permitting)

  • We will hold workshops on the outdoor performance deck, and throughout the expansive grounds amidst the surrounding fields and nature. (Indoor studio is also available for use).

  • You have access to 76 hectares 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 a trip to the sea

Upon acceptance: €350 program deposit due to confirm participation

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

Due to the program start in May, full payment is due April 1.

Getting to our location

  • The nearest airport is Lisbon (50 minutes drive)

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

    • There is parking on site for those who wish to arrive by car.