Lauranne Paulissen concluded her master’s degree in acting at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp with great distinction, after having completed an internship as an actress at ITA in the Netherlands. She also followed a teacher training program at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp as well as the Universität der Künste of Berlin. Since then she has been a teacher, actress, researcher and theatre maker.
In 2018, Paulissen performed in a play by Piet Arfeuille and in ‘De halve ring’ from de Warme Winkel, a sequel of ‘Das Rheingold’ that she had co-created earlier. In 2021 she created the third part of this opera called ‘4 Girls 1 Wagner’. Earlier, in 2015, Paulissen worked on a research project with Evgenia Brendes, regarding the relevance of Ibsen. The role of gender and repertoire was already present in this project. As an actress, over the years, she developed a close connection to dramatic repertoire. In Berlin she got the opportunity to learn different approaches regarding this subject. All this background formed the motivation for her research project ‘Resisting repertoire’. In this project she did archival research for forgotten Flemish female playwrights and she launched the production of Martha de Krankzinnige, a play by forgotten Antwerp playwright Anna Slimbroeck de Peuter. In this production she experiments with strategies for a greater gender balance. Following this project, she realized an intersectional view on repertoire theatre was necessary, so she applied for her PhD ‘intersecting repertoire’.