At the Perth Fringe World and Adelaide Fringe 2026 festivals, Swiss choreographer and performer Elsa Couvreur will present her two solos, The Sensemaker and Embarrassed Naked Female. Trained at the Royal Ballet School in Antwerp and the Geneva Junior Ballet, Couvreur cultivates an unclassifiable art form that blends dance, theatre and humour to explore the points of friction between individuals and the systems that surpass them.
After touring in more than 6 languages and having more than 130 performances around the world with The Sensemaker, in which a woman is confronted with the absurdity of a robotic voice, she returns to Australia with this cult piece. But she will also present her new creation, Embarrassed Naked Female, a daring and darkly humorous lecture-performance inspired by the non-consensual dissemination of a video of her on the internet. Two complementary works that each, in their own way, question the loss of control, the gaze of others and the right to exist fully as an individual. We talk to Elsa Couvreur to find out more about her career, her inspirations and the themes that run through her creations.
Elsa Couvreur, you trained at the Royal Ballet School in Antwerp and the Geneva Junior Ballet. How does this classical and contemporary background influence the type of work you create today?
The pieces I create always combine theatre and dance to varying degrees. They are often closer to theatre (this is the case for The Sensemaker and even more so for Embarrassed Naked Female), but there are always elements of dance. I like to play with these different tools.
Your pieces combine dance, theatre and humour. Did you receive formal training in theatre or circus arts, or did these elements emerge more spontaneously through your experiments?
I have no formal training in theatre; I learned on the job while creating my shows. The ideas I had required me to try my hand at theatre, so I did. After that, I became interested in clowning and did a few courses that helped me work on my relationship with the audience: my training as a dancer hadn’t covered that at all. In dance, you rarely look at the audience. In clowning, that’s all you do. It helped me create a closeness with the audience, which is relatively new for me.
[I] did a few courses that helped me work on my relationship with the audience: my training as a dancer hadn’t covered that at all. In dance, you rarely look at the audience. In clowning, that’s all you do.
Woman’s Move, founded in Switzerland in 2012 and co-directed with Iona D’Annunzio, creates both solo and group pieces. What have more than ten years of this collaboration taught you about your own solo voice?
Iona and I have a very similar artistic vision, but we don’t create together because our creative processes are very different – and also because we like to have the final say on our respective creations. This collaboration works very well; we have the freedom to express ourselves while still having each other’s support and outside perspective. Her feedback has been invaluable to me when creating my pieces, especially as a solo artist, when I am sometimes so immersed in my work, alone all day, that an outside perspective is very welcome!
In The Sensemaker, a woman waits on the phone, stuck with elevator music and a robotic voice repeating that her request is being processed, until she is pushed beyond her limits. What made you want to transform this very everyday situation into a kind of dystopian battlefield?
It was the interaction with a robotic voice that gave me that urge. I had stumbled upon a website that allowed you to have any text read aloud by robotic voices. This was before the advances in artificial intelligence, and the voices had intonations that were not at all human or natural. While having fun making them say anything and everything, I came up with the idea of having a character interact with this voice. In everyday life, we often have to interact with robots, with all the frustration that entails. As a result, people quickly identify with the character in The Sensemaker and instantly feel her frustration, which seemed to me to be a good starting point for questioning the abuses of a faceless authority to which one can only respond with yes or no.
While having fun making them say anything and everything, I came up with the idea of having a character interact with this voice. In everyday life, we often have to interact with robots, with all the frustration that entails.
The show has been described as ‘unclassifiable’ and similar to the world of Black Mirror. Do you recognise yourself in these labels, and how would you define the world you portray in The Sensemaker?
Yes, I think the style of The Sensemaker is unclassifiable! And it’s not just me saying that, but journalists, audiences and theatre directors… sometimes to my detriment, because this artistic ambiguity means that the play sometimes doesn’t fit into either a theatre programme or a dance programme. Personally, I love this in-between space. I like the idea that the play is a bit of an oddity and that the audience wonders what they’ve just seen. But if I had to choose a genre to classify it, I’d say it’s a play with elements of dance and clowning.
Personally, I love this in-between space. I like the idea that the play is a bit of an oddity and that the audience wonders what they’ve just seen.
Sound plays a central role in the piece: looped music, automated voice, repetition. How did you work with these sound elements in creating the choreography and structure of the show?
I spent more than half of the creative process in front of my computer, editing the audio. The Sensemaker is a solo piece, but in reality it’s a duet between my character and the automated voice. I did a lot of trial and error with this voice, making it say the words in a different order, leaving intervals in places that don’t sound natural. Rhythm is very important throughout the piece: it’s either too slow, or too fast. We wait, and suddenly everything happens too fast. This is reflected a lot in the soundtrack, where I deliberately left passages hanging or emphasised repetitions, before abruptly interrupting everything to move on to something else.
The Sensemaker has been touring internationally since 2018, with more than 130 performances, six languages and numerous awards. What have you learned from presenting this same solo show to so many different audiences and in so many different contexts?
That everyone has waited on the phone before! People seem to recognise themselves in my character pretty much everywhere I’ve been. Also, that expectations of a show sometimes vary depending on the location, especially when it’s a show like The Sensemaker, which isn’t really a comedy, but still has a lot of humour in it. Sometimes people burst out laughing within the first few seconds. Sometimes I hear stifled laughter after half an hour. In some places, comedies are the most popular genre and people go to the show with the firm intention of laughing. They are disappointed if the show isn’t funny. Conversely, in other places, classical theatre dominates, and people want to be moved. They don’t expect to laugh. I think the play appeals to these different audiences in different ways, grabbing them with what they like: it’s funny, but also moving.
In some places, comedies are the most popular genre and people go to the show with the firm intention of laughing. They are disappointed if the show isn’t funny. Conversely, in other places, classical theatre dominates, and people want to be moved. They don’t expect to laugh.
Embarrassed Naked Female is presented like a “lecture-performance following a stolen video down the rabbit hole of internet creeps”. When did you realise that this experience of online circulation of the video was the starting point for a show?
When I talked about it with people around me, they suggested I turn it into a play. The person who convinced me was the one who became my writing assistant—Christophe Dupuis, a Canadian artist who also creates lecture-performances. By the time I had this discussion with him, it had been more than four years since the video had been stolen – and I think that’s how long it took me to gain the necessary distance to be able to talk about this story in public.
You explain that during the 2020 lockdown, you put The Sensemaker online and that, ‘because of the five minutes of nudity,’ the video became highly sought after in certain corners of the internet. How did you feel when you discovered this new life for the work on adult forums, without your consent?
It made me very angry. First of all, I was extremely surprised: it’s not as if the internet is lacking in videos of naked people. So I simply hadn’t thought that five minutes of me naked on stage during an artistic performance would interest anyone. I didn’t understand the craze that these unknown men seemed to have for this video.
First of all, I was extremely surprised: it’s not as if the internet is lacking in videos of naked people.
Then I felt like I had been robbed in every possible way: in The Sensemaker, it takes me 45 minutes to build empathy for my character, and the moment I undress, the audience identifies with me as a subject and projects themselves into the dilemma my character is experiencing.
By taking this scene out of context, these men turned me into an object to be looked at. Beyond the violation that this represents, it was also what I felt was the destruction of my artistic work that hurt me. The impression that no matter what I do, no matter my talent or abilities, I will always be reduced to my physical appearance by some men as soon as I show a bit of skin – even in a context where I have done everything to ensure that my character is not seen as an object.
By taking this scene out of context, these men turned me into an object to be looked at. Beyond the violation that this represents, it was also what I felt was the destruction of my artistic work that hurt me.
You say that even today you still have to have the video removed from various sites where it regularly reappears. How does this ongoing effort fuel what you talk about on stage in Embarrassed Naked Female?
Unfortunately, yes. Since the play’s first performance at the end of August 2025, I have already added new passages following further leaks of the video on adult forums and websites. It seems that this play is destined to evolve, as unfortunately it appears that these men are not about to stop sharing the video.
In trying to trace the spread of the video, you say you stumbled upon ‘a bizarre world of posts and comments’. How did you choose which comments or online reactions to include in the performance?
It was a lot of work, because I could have done 12 hours of plays if I had read all their comments. I did a huge amount of sorting. I had friends read the drafts, who analysed the text academically and helped me choose the comments that served my purpose, that were useful, interesting, sometimes funny, often shocking, and revealing of the thinking of these groups of men online who exchange these kinds of videos without the consent of the women who filmed them.
choose the comments that served my purpose, that were useful, interesting, sometimes funny, often shocking, and revealing of the thinking of these groups of men online who exchange these kinds of videos without the consent of the women who filmed them.
The show is presented as “a darkly humorous dive into consent in the digital age”. What new questions on consent emerged when you were creating the show?
Mostly questions about image rights and copyright. I realised that my sexual consent – or rather, my non-consent – didn’t interest many people. I was only able to get the video removed thanks to copyright, by asserting my intellectual property rights. This made me aware of the gaps that exist in terms of protecting physical integrity. For these men, the fact that the video exists on the internet equates to consent to have it reposted anywhere, everywhere, and in any context, and unlimited permission to project any of their fantasies onto me. What struck me was that when I interacted with them to ask them to stop, I was not at all welcome in ‘their’ spaces – despite the fact that I was posted there!
For these men, the fact that the video exists on the internet equates to consent to have it reposted anywhere, everywhere, and in any context, and unlimited permission to project any of their fantasies onto me. What struck me was that when I interacted with them to ask them to stop, I was not at all welcome in ‘their’ spaces – despite the fact that I was posted there!
They want to use images of women as erotic objects, but the real women, the people behind the image, they don’t want to hear about them. It’s a form of dehumanisation that is exaggerated by the distance of the screen. I don’t have the solution for what needs to be done to protect myself and all the other women like me who have had the misfortune of finding themselves shared on these sites, but I know that something needs to be done, and that as a society, we are lagging behind on this issue.
In both of your solos, a woman finds herself confronted with systems that are beyond her control, whether it be an answering machine or the circulation of images online. What keeps bringing you back to these power struggles between the individual and a larger system?
It’s a theme that finds its way into all my plays, without me even trying! Through art, I think I’m always asserting my right to exist as an individual. Often without realising it, I portray people who are victims of a system over which they have little control. I think this feeling of powerlessness is universal, and that’s what my plays tap into in the audience.
Through art, I think I’m always asserting my right to exist as an individual. Often without realising it, I portray people who are victims of a system over which they have little control.
Humour and discomfort coexist in The Sensemaker as they do in Embarrassed Naked Female. What role does humour play for you when you tackle such disturbing subjects?
It’s a way of releasing tension. Neither The Sensemaker nor Embarrassed Naked Female are tragedies, precisely because they make people laugh. My plays deal with feelings of powerlessness, and ridiculing the people or systems that mistreat us is already a way of regaining some power over the situation.
My plays deal with feelings of powerlessness, and ridiculing the people or systems that mistreat us is already a way of regaining some power over the situation.
The Sensemaker is returning to Adelaide after a successful run in 2023, and you’re also presenting Embarrassed Naked Female there. What does it mean to you to show these two solos together at the Adelaide Fringe Festival?
I’m really looking forward to performing these two pieces in the same place! There’s the play, and the play about the play. I think each of these two shows creates interest in the other.
The Adelaide Fringe is known for hosting unclassifiable and daring works. How does this festival context resonate with your way of creating and performing?
I have performed my plays at fringe festivals a lot for precisely this reason. These are often festivals that programme plays that you wouldn’t see in a more traditional network, and the audience is often enthusiastic about discovering new things. Due to their style and proximity to the audience, I think these two solos will be very much at home there.
Having already met Adelaide audiences with The Sensemaker, have their reactions influenced the way you approach the show today, or even the creation of the new solo piece?
At Adelaide Fringe, the most common type of show by far is comedy (whether stand-up, clowning, parodies, etc.). Spending two and a half weeks in an atmosphere where laughter reigns supreme was very inspiring and made me want to give even more free rein to humour in my plays, to allow myself to be as imaginative as I want, while still conveying a strong message.
Why should people come see your shows at Perth Fringe World and Adelaide Fringe?
Because they will be different! Everywhere that I have toured, my plays have been described as unusual. I think they will surprise you and be the topic of conversation over drinks with your friends afterwards.
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We thank Elsa Couvreur for this interview.
INFOS CLÉS POUR LES SPECTACLES D’ELSA COUVREUR : THE SENSEMAKER & EMBARRASSED NAKED FEMALE À PERTH & À ADELAIDE
PERTH FRINGE WORLD
QUOI : Embarrassed Naked Female (this show contains nudity)
OÙ : Chevron Science Theatre at Scitech Discovery Centre
QUAND : 5 spectacles seulement :
- vendredi 30 janvier à 21h,
- jeudi 5 février à 21h
- dimanche 8 février à 19h30
- jeudi 12 février à 19h30
- samedi 14 février à 21h
HOW: Buy your tickets via this link
HOW MUCH: Ticket prices (exclusive of transaction fee) are:
- Full price: $29
- Friends Frenzy : $20.50
- Group (6 or more people): $23 (minimum of 6 tickets)
ADELAIDE FRINGE
WHAT: Embarrassed Naked Female (this show contains nudity)
WHERE:The Lark at Gluttony – Rymill Park, ADELAIDE
WHEN : Tuesday 24 February to Sunday 1 March at 7:20pm
HOW: Buy your tickets via this link
HOW MUCH: Ticket prices (exclusive of transaction fee) are:
- Full Price: $30 to $35
- Fringe Member: $15 (minimum of 2 tickets)
- Mid week treat: $20
- Health Care Card holders: $22 to $27
- Senior : $22 to $27
- Students: $22 to $27
WHAT: The Sensemaker
WHERE: The Breakout at The Mill
WHEN:
- Wednesday 4 March and Thursday 6 March at 9pm
- Friday 6 March and Saturday 7 March at 10:30pm
HOW: Buy your tickets via this link
HOW MUCH: Ticket prices (exclusive of transaction fee) are:
- Full Price: $30 to $35
- Fringe Member: $15 to $17.50 (2 ticket minimum)
- Mid week treat: $20
- Health Care Card holder: $22 to $27
- Seniors : $22 to $27
- Students: $22 to $27
