Mia Star van Leeuwen

In the 1990’s, Mia found herself on the roly-poly pastures of New Zealand, posing as a sheepherder. On the search, she left the South Pacific behind, eternally returning to the prairies of hometown Winnipeg. It was there that she enrolled in the Theatre Department at University of Winnipeg and encountered Dr. Claire Borody - a woman who changed her life forever more. With Borody at the helm, Mia trained in Devised Theatre creating her first original work, a solo that explored the polymorphously perverse entitled “Inspect Your Sex.” During this time Mia met and quickly formed an extraordinary relationship with fellow classmate Ian Mozdzen. Sharing a perverted and subversive sensibility, they graduated, left University behind, and went on to co-found out of line theatre (2002). The rest is history in the making …

Mia has also had the pleasure of working with other independent companies and thinkers.

Recently, Mia joined forces with Witchdoctor Michael Dudeck  performing in WOMBTOMB (New York, 2011) and AMYGDALA (Winnipeg, 2011). Both of the performances take part in a 10-year project that finds Dudeck inventing a Queer Prehistory/Religion that radically re-imagines the nature of human origins.

In 2009, Mia was adopted into the avant-garde-object-theatre universe of Grant Guy (Founder of Adhere & Deny).  She performed in Grant’s interpretation of Milton’s Paradise Lost (2009), a still piece of post-card theatre inspired by the sculptor Giacometti in Still Walking (2010), and an adaptation of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug (2011).

Mia has worked with Theatre Incarnate, co-creating the physically intense and wordless world of Guernica (2008) and performing as Brenda McLean’s love interest in Mamet’s Boston Marriage (Master Playwrights Festival, 2008).

Mia has also had the delight of working with world-renowned filmmaker Guy Maddin. She appeared in various guises in the short projects Fancy Fancy Being Rich (2002), Glorious (2009), as well as in My Winnipeg (2008), Hauntings (2012) and Keyhole (2012).

Mia is moving!

In September 2012, Mia will begin her MFA in Performance Creation at the University of Alberta’s Drama Department in Edmonton, Alberta.