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Theatre maker Adelheid Roosen (born 1958) engages with controversial subjects such as honour killings, domestic violence, sexuality in the Muslim world, her own mother’s experience of Alzheimer’s. Nothing is, or must be allowed to remain, taboo.
Inspired by her experiences researching, writing and directing a trilogy about Muslim immigrants (1997–2006), Roosen developed a method through which theatre practitioners are ‘adopted’ by the local residents of a neighbourhood for a period of two weeks to ensure the formation of deep and genuine relationships with the ‘other’ and allow the artists to collect material based on real life experiences. The method has since taken root in both the Dutch and international theatre world.
Roosen was awarded the 2009 Amsterdam Prize for her boundary-breaking contributions to the arts in Amsterdam. She has also won a Gouden Kalf film award and has twice won the Prosceniumprijs. The Humanist Association of the Netherlands awarded her the J.P. van Praag-prijs for being ‘a tireless advocate of a world that gives solidarity a new chance’. She has been affiliated with the Amsterdam University of the Arts for almost three decades as a drama teacher