Lara Staal

Lara Staal (she/her, °84), as NTGent’s resident artist, created the play DISSIDENT, in which five so-called “troubled youths” educate the audience about what’s wrong with today’s education system; the short film *De Zaak Samuel*, about the ordeal a young Eritrean refugee must endure to reach Europe; the play *SERDI* about youth welfare (selected by the theater festival), and DE GEVANGENIS, a performance in which four former inmates dissect the prison system and reveal its consequences for a person’s life.

Her most recent production, DE BLAUW, is about the police. Expertise through lived experience is a central concept in Staal’s work. This stems from the conviction that embodied experience is essential to bridging the gap between policymakers and the people whose lives are directly affected by those policies.