Sascha Cornelissen

Sascha Amber Cornelissen (2002) is an actor, theatre maker, writer, and singer from Rotterdam.

Music is a central element of her artistic practice. She performs jazz, funk, classical music, and Dutch cabaret, exploring how music, text, and performance can deepen and reinforce one another. During her internship with Studio Antigone, she played the role of Sasha in *Ivanov*. To express her character's inner resistance, she performed *Army of Me* by Björk, using the song as an undercurrent of protest within a classic repertoire production.

Sascha is equally at home in bold, physical, and humorous performance as she is in dramatic, layered, and naturalistic acting. She approaches her work with discipline, enjoys thinking from the perspective of the production as a whole, and always searches for what a scene, character, or performance truly needs. Curiosity is her greatest driving force—sometimes to the point of being nerdy.

As a theatre maker, she explores themes such as loneliness, alienation, humour, and the human need for certainty and belonging. Rather than seeking definitive answers to life's biggest questions, she is fascinated by the vulnerability that lies within the search itself. How do we relate to uncertainty? What stories do we tell ourselves in order to make sense of the world?

In her graduation thesis, she examined the intersections of absurdism, science, and spirituality, drawing inspiration from writers such as Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus. Her research reflected a deep fascination with absurdism, existentialism, and the ways in which people create meaning within a reality that ultimately exceeds their understanding.

During her graduation year, she co-created *SAPPHOLYMPICS* with Collective JOCH: a theatrical game show in which queerness, feminism, music, absurdism, and text-based theatre came together. What began as a tightly structured performance gradually unravelled into visual chaos, sound, and absurdity—a dramaturgical movement that became characteristic of the collective's work.

After graduating, Sascha will join Theatergroep Playback, where she will begin working in theatre for young audiences. Alongside this, she will continue developing her own work, including a solo performance titled *The Rosebush*, and a new children's theatre production for the festival circuit in collaboration with Josephine Borst. She also aims to further develop her practice in both contemporary and classical repertoire theatre while exploring opportunities in film.