About

Lara van Huyssteen is a South African theatre maker who is currently based in London.

She premiered her solo performance That Boy Has No Shoes, a personal perspective on the history of Apartheid, at Camden People’s Theatre in July 2024 as part of The Camden Fringe. The performance received excellent four-star reviews that labelled the work as ‘immersive’, ‘moving’ and ‘powerful’. Following on from its summer run, the performance was selected for Voila! Theatre Festival and performed at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in November 2024. The show will tour South Africa in 2025.

Lara is a co-founder and company member of Et al. Performance. They are a new London-based theatre company that specialises in a hybrid genre between dark comedy and durational performance, 

Practice

Lara ’s aim is to create new artistic, social and political experiences for theatregoers.

In her practice, Lara uses writing and scenography to create a temporal space that forces the past and present into a confrontation. She follows a holistic approach to making, creating the aural and visual components of the work simultaneously, and combines them using performer practices. Through this process, Lara is presented onstage as the ‘scenographer-as-performer’. She appears as a character version of herself, presenting a performance style which navigates between ‘acting’ for the audience and ‘performing a task’ for the stage.

Her work includes That Boy Has No Shoes (2024), ABUNDANCE by Et al. (2024), Jeté! by Et al. (2023), Til Death Do We Part (2022) and Attempts on her Life (2021).

Education

Lara trained in acting at Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts before developing her practice as a theatre maker and scenographer at UAL: Wimbledon College of Arts. She continued her studies at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama on MA Advanced Theatre Practice, graduating with distinction. Lara co-founded Et al. Performance with Belle Thurston and Gabriella Curtis whilst on the MA.