Marieke Schraepen & Sophia Bauer
Marieke Schraepen (BE 1995) is an actress and theater maker. Before graduating from KASK drama in 2022, she studied European Theater Arts at Rose Bruford College. In 2017, she obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in philosophy from KULeuven. In her graduation performance Guilty of Love, she and Sophia Bauer and Mats Vandroogenbroeck, she explored the cultural obsession with sexual violence. Guilty of Love was performed at Theater Aan Zee ’22, among other venues, and will be revived at KVS in 2024.
Marieke seeks an artistic language that embodies rather than conceives. She plays with stereotypical (mental) images and rattles them until they fall apart. With humor and love, she attempts to transform difficult, often painful content and remove it from the realm of taboo. Her bachelor’s performance Kaddish for M (2020) staged mourning in all its facets and was created in response to her mother’s long illness and death. She seeks critical theater that can create an encounter with the unknown, the strange, the complex.
Together with Sophia, she forms an artistic duo. They created Motherbaby (2024) with Kristien De Proost, an abstract musical about the (social) connotations of motherhood.
Marieke also performs in the work of others. She appeared as Lola in Een Lola (2021) by Yahya Terryn at Compagnie Cecilia. That same year, she performed in Giants (2021) by Werktoneel. In 2022, she made a brief appearance as Sonia in Fun Loving Humans by Simon D’Huyvetter & Kopergietery.
Marieke sang for many years in the choir Ingrid’s Angels and was lead singer with the pop band Tricky Business and the jazz and tango orchestra Art Déco.
Marieke is also active as a theater teacher. She gives workshops to children at Larf, Wildgroei, and Einstein Atheneum. She writes about theater and occasionally publishes with Rekto:Verso. She also works as coordinator for the third bachelor’s and master’s programs at KASK drama.
Sophia Bauer (DE 1994) is an actress and theater maker. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in textile design, she studied drama at KASK School of Arts in Ghent and applied theater studies at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. In her graduation performance Guilty Of Love, which was shown at TAZ’ 22, among other places, she explored, together with Marie Schraepen and Mats Vandroogenbroeck, the eroticization of sexual violence in our collective imagination. Guilty of Love will be revived in 2024 at KVS.
Sophia’s work reveals a deep commitment. She is fascinated by the cultural and social construction of ‘femininity’ and attempts to give it a new twist with courage and humor. In her bachelor’s thesis And then you fucked me into being — post-coital letters (2020), a correspondence with Anna Franziska Jäger accompanied by texts by Daniel Paul Schreber, she wonders what love for a woman means in a world of heterosexual desire.
She forms an artistic duo with Marie Schraepen, whom she met during her studies. Together with her and Kristien de Proost, she created Motherbaby, a sung performance about the sky-high expectations placed on mothers.In addition to her own performances, Sophia regularly performs in other people’s work. She gained her first professional experience as an actress in De Dieren (2020), directed by Geert Belpaeme. She then appeared as a performer in Newpolyphonies by Myriam van Imschoot & HYOID (2020). In 2021, she performed in Giants by Werktoneel. Recently, she played the role of Albertinette in Operette (2021), a performance by Timeau de Keyser & Tibaldus. Sophia also writes and performs songs, for example at De verleiding van het woord (The temptation of the word) in youth theater Larf.
Outside of her artistic practice, Sophia is gaining experience in the healthcare sector. As a student, she worked in various retirement homes and now works part-time as a counselor for children in care at Minor N‑Dako, Brussels. For Sophia, the move to the social sector is an important addition to her theater practice: the necessity in her artistic work stems from this.