About 

Rosa Postlethwaite (she/they) is a North East-based performance artist who has been making solo and collaborative performance works since 2012.

They work across live art, dance, socially engaged art and theatre.

Presenting internationally and across the UK in galleries and theatres, their projects take on different characters, responsive to different spaces. Rosa’s works are expressive and humorous. Their shifting, queer performance practice aims to shake up the taken-for-grantedness of the way things are.  

Rosa’s dramaturgy and facilitation practice is focused on having conversations. They are currently working with Exodus Crooks and whatsthebigmistry on Dialogue/debate an on-going collaborative project about conversation as a tool for trust building. 

Rosa is a PhD researcher at Coventry University (UK), and Aarhus University (Denmark). Their practice research is on dramaturgy with other-than-human species (2021 – 2025). 

Collaborations include artists, theatre-makers and choreographers, Hannah Walker, Lizzie Klotz, Louise Orwin, Laurie Ramsell, Nicola Singh, Tessa Parr among others.  

They co-founded and produced PUG performance club night (2016-2020). 

Rosa has presented at Gateshead International Festival of Theatre, CLAY at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Northern Stage, Ikon Gallery, Vivid Projects, Camden People’s Theatre, Muffatwerk Munich, Bio Arts Birmingham, ICA Cape Town. 

They have facilitated events and workshops at Baltic Contemporary, Black Hole Club, Socially Awkward (Lady Kitt and Newbridge Project), Peopling the Palace, Gylleboverket Performance Festival and Stratford-upon-Avon Community Art Project. 

 

Reasons
For connection
To feel good
To know something differently
To work through shame
To seek attention
For resistance and survival
To transform

How
Follow impulses (Lois Weaver/Split Britches)
Follow desire (Lois Weaver/Split Britches)
How does it feel
Autobiography
Have conversations
Fail
Where is the place & where is my position
Do it differently
Re-do (Lois Weaver/Split Britches)

What recurs
Discipline
Shattering
Intimacy & violence
Wonder in the everyday
Depression
Something unknowable
Love
Humour

 

Privileges: Rosa is a white, middle-class British person. English is their first and only language. These privileges, among others, have aided Rosa’s freedom to be an artist. Thank you to Larissa Shaw for including a privileges section on her website and encouraging others to do the same.

Artists that inspire Rosa: Amy Winehouse, Split Britches,
William Pope.L, Black Hole Club.

Thank you to Nadia Iftkhar for her mentorship.

Rosa Postlethwaite, The Security Hut (2014). Photography by Daneel Knoetze.

Rosa Postlethwaite, People are scared of laziness (2020). Cinematography by Adam Opie.

“Rosa Postlethwaite delivers a quietly devastating performance in her thought-provoking solo show about the arts industry” – ★★★★ The Stage

“Rosa Postlethwaite’s solo play is an intelligent, bold and thought-provoking look at the act of feeling” – ★★★★ Liam O’Dell Review

“Irony gets in the way” – ★★★ Guardian Review

Professional development:
ALL MY RELATIONS: Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund Unversity, Gylleboverket,  (2022)
BFI Creative Producer School: BFI Online (2020)
Active Reality Research Lab: New Arts West Midlands with Coventry City of Culture Trust, ARUP and artist Simon Poulter (2020)
Digi Transform: New Writing North (2018)
Expanding Horizons Artist Development Programme: Dance City (2016 – 2017)
Private Keep Out: Curious LADA DIY Lab (2016)