Bianca Mastrominico is a performance maker, author/director and scholar currently based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Born in Naples (Italy) she received her first apprenticeship in her theatre family through the artistic work of her parents, Pina Cipriani and Franco Nico, alongside studying for a degree in Letters and Philosophy. In 2002 Bianca founded Organic Theatre with actor John Dean, a cross-cultural performance laboratory rooted in ongoing training and research for innovative practice and pedagogy. Bianca is currently Programme Leader for MA Digital Performance and BA(Hons) Performance at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, where she also teaches Theatre Anthropology as well as Theatre Laboratory and Devising Practices. She is a member of the Centre of Communication, Cultural and Media Studies and is an active member of the Practice Research Cluster: Finding and Understanding Creative Knowledge. Bianca has published for The Open Page, Journal of Theatre Anthropology, Total Theatre Magazine, New Theatre Quarterly, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and Body, Space and Technology, amongst others.

John Dean is an actor and performance maker, who co-founded Organic Theatre with Bianca in 2002. He had his initial classical theatre training in London and worked for many theatres and companies in the UK, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre Studio and Shakespeare’s Globe, whilst pursuing further training with the Gardzienice Theatre Association in Poland, which led him to learn with Odin Teatret in Denmark, Milon Mela in India, and Keith Johnstone in Canada, amongst others. He is currently based in Edinburgh, Scotland where he works at Queen Margaret University alongside Bianca, teaching and leading the Performing Arts team. He is a member of the Centre of Communication, Cultural and Media Studies and is actively involved in the Practice Research Cluster: Finding and Understanding Creative Knowledge, where he also develops practice research projects based on Organic Theatre’s creative work.

ORGANIC THEATRE is a cross-cultural performance laboratory created by Bianca Mastrominico and John Dean in 2002, looking for organicity in serendipity and embodied knowledge and building upon personal artistic know-how. The work is rooted in ongoing training and research for innovative interdisciplinary practice and pedagogy, and focuses on process-led collaborative creation and audience participation, both live and digital. The group has performed throughout the UK and Europe, in theatres, art galleries, museums, streets, barns, village halls and festivals including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Brighton Fringe Festival, Brighton Science Festival, Festival d’Automne à Paris (France), E45 – Napoli Teatro Festival Italia (Naples, Italy) amongst others. Organic Theatre has received financial support from Arts Council England, Exeter City Council, and Bristol City Council, ESPRC – Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e Turismo, and Napoli Teatro Festival Italia (Italy).

Helen Varley Jamieson is a writer, theatre practitioner and digital artist from New Zealand, based in Germany. She has a Master of Arts (Research) from Queensland University of Technology, investigating cyberformance (live performance on the internet) which she has practiced for over a decade. She is a founding member of the globally-dispersed cyberformance troupe Avatar Body Collision, a co-founder of UpStage, an open source web- based platform for cyberformance, and co-curator of online festivals involving artists and audiences internationally. She is also the “web queen” of The Magdalena Project and works with several women, arts and technology groups, creating solo and collaborative performances (online and off-line). Her cyberformance work has been presented at festivals and events around the world.

Veronica Ragusa is an actress, director, theatre trainer. She graduated at Turin University, studied Philip Radice Physical Theatre Atelier, the Course of Singing, Theory and Jazz Solfeggio of the Turin Civic School of Music, and worked with the company

A.R.T.I. Independent Theatrical Research Area directed by Marco Luciano. For many years she also worked as a street artist travelling far and wide. She has collaborated with Teatro Nucleo since 2019 with pedagogical projects for children, teenagers and adults, organisation and cultural planning.

Marco Luciano studied literature and philosophy at the Federico II University of Naples. He began his artistic career at a very young age with the company I Refrattari of Caserta. In 2003 he joined the C.R.A.S.C. Centre for Research on Actors and Cultural Experimentation of Naples, then directed by Lucio Colle. From 2005 to 2013 he managed STUDIOTEATRO, an independent theatre space in Naples. In 2009 he founded the A.R.T.I. Independent Theatrical Research Area working as a director in Turin. In 2018 he began his collaboration with Teatro Nucleo as an actor, director and organiser and worked as part of the Theatre Workshop project with the actors-inmates of the C. Satta of Ferrara.

Mérida Urquia is an actress, pedagogue, director and cultural manager born and raised in Cuba and based in Colombia since 1994. She is the director of the La Flor del Actor Theatre Festival, founded in Bogotá in 2018 as a tribute to actors and actresses of the world with a long creative and pedagogical career. In 2016, she founded the project Los Rechazados, in Bogotá - a free workshop for the training of young people with limited resources, which annually invites international actors and actresses as teachers. Mérida started as an actress in 1986 in the Teatro Universitario de la Habana. In 1988, she founded in Cuba, together with other artists, the Teatro a Cuestas, a group inspired by Odin Teatret. From 1996 to 2012 she was actress in the Ensamblaje Teatro de Colombia, and now directs Mi Compañía Teatro in Bogotá. She has toured the solo performance La extranjera to many different countries.

Else Marie Laukvik was born in 1944 in Oslo, Norway. Together with Eugenio Barba, she was one of the founders of Odin Teatret. In 1966, Else Marie followed the group to Holstebro, Denmark. Her experiences as an actor are published in The Actor’s Way, edited by Erik Exe Christoffersen. At the same time as she was performing with Odin Teatret, Else Marie worked as director for Teatret Marquez (Denmark), Munin Teatret (Denmark), Teatro Actores Alidos (Italy), Rogo Teatro (Italy), Associazione Culturale Teatro dell’Albero (Italy), Kabaret Wagon (Denmark), Mia & Max (UK). As an actress Else Marie has also collaborated with Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo (Italy) in 1996.

MI COMPAÑÍA TEATRO was founded by Mérida Urquia in 2012 in Bogotá, as a framework to produce her own performances and a structure to work with young actors and students. Mérida found- ed the group after she left Ensamblaje Teatro to establish of her own independence as an artist.

Giovanna Michaliadi Sarti is member and performer of the Multiactive Team - Fabrica Athens Theatre Group since 2015. Giovanna has worked with performing arts since 2011 beginning with Hoop-dance and then training in circus techniques such as stilts, unicycle, juggling, walking globe and fire juggling since 2013. She has taken part in festivals in Greece and abroad as a Hula Hoop Performer, a Fire Performer and as a member of the performing duet Mr and Mrs Bubble. In addition, she cooperates with the Greek group of Clowns Without Borders Sweden. She is a Nada Yoga Teacher trained in the Nada Yoga School in Rishikesh, India. As a performer she has taken part in site specific performances, in shorts of Studio Matejka and in the performances 7 Deadly Sins and Faith by Fabrica Athens Theatre Group.

Fanis Katehos graduated from Drama School and continued training next at London Centre for Acting. As a theatre trainer he collaborates with the Korydallos Psychiatric Establishment for Prisoners, the Nazim Hitmek Akademi Korosu (Constantinople), the Department of Architecture of the Alicante University (Spain), Mostar Organisation (Bosnia), Asosiación Juvenil Inter-

A.J Inter (Spain) and the Drama School “Iakovos Kampanelis” of the Municipality of Agia Varvara. He also holds seminars in Fabrica Athens Theatre Group and in European Youth Programs. As an actor, director and coach he has taken part in a great number of plays. His latest performances were Land without Man, Faith and 7 Deadly Sins of Fabrica Athens Theatre Group. He was the first to bring Bubble Performing to Greece with Mr and Mrs Bubble. He is co-founder of the Fabrica Athens Theatre Group Art Team, Fabrica Athens Art Space, and the creator and organiser of the Handmade and Recycled Theatre Festival.

Nefeli Stamatogiannopoulou is a nominated composer, im- proviser, bass player and has participated in many theatre performances and films as a composer, performer or director.

She collaborates with the Duende ensemble, Milena Principle, Teatr Andra and is the founding member of the musical group Spooky RedRum and the research artistic group Ov OFF. She finished her postgraduate studies at the department of Compositon for film, theatre and performing arts of the Ionian University, where she is a PhD candidate and a tutorial teacher.

Tal Yuval Mor is a multimedia artist and performer from San Francisco, California. She is currently based between California, Greece, and Israel. She studied Art & Technology at Mills College in Oakland, California. She was raised by Mission Arts Performance Project, a group of artists and neighbours who create multi-genre art events spanning the Mission District. Since July 2021, she has been a student and collaborator of Multiactive Group of Art Fabrica in Athens, Greece.

FABRICA ATHENS MULTI-ACTIVE GROUP OF ART is a theatrical

organisation that promotes artistic creation, research and education, since its establishment in 2009. It is active in the fields of theatre (performance, street theatre, applied theatre, research theatre), circus, yoga and handmade DIY constructions, both nationally and internationally. It organises the annual HRTFest. The goals of the group are to support independent and handmade creation, as well as to support and train young artists (performers and actors). In addition, it invests in building links between people, scientists, artists, scholars and different disciplines towards an interdisciplinary, holistic and human- centred art.