ASSOCIATE ARTIST 2024-25

for theatre artists passionate about collaboration

Following extensive consultation with artists through 2021-22, and a pilot working with two artists exploring the potential structure and aims for a new artist-led programme at Ad Infinitum, in May 2024 we launched our Associate Artist role. We were thrilled to appoint Elisabeth Gunawan as our first associate artist. Find out more about Elisabeth and what she has been up to below via her blog, Ghost Town.

Ghost Town

a blog post from elisabeth gunawan, ad infinitum’s 2024-25 associate artist

I am a Chinese-Indonesian theatremaker and the artistic director of KISS WITNESS. I believe that theatre has the power to open up spaces of belonging for those who don’t have it in real life. My hope is for the theatre that I create to be able to decolonise the imagination and empower people.

My journey with Ad Infinitum began in 2023 when I joined as a performer-deviser in If You Fall. What started as an actor/artistic director relationship with Nir and George has evolved significantly over the past two years—first into mentorship (as seasoned EdFringe veterans, they supported me through my Edinburgh Fringe debut with my solo show Unforgettable Girl), and now within the wider breadth of the associate artistship.

This associate artistship has proven to be an invaluable opportunity and fertile ground for collaboration. Together, we've discovered a rich intersection of shared values and similar creative processes, while still honoring our distinct artistic practices and perspectives.

Our collective vision is ambitious yet clear: to create transformative theatre that revolutionizes audiences and changes the world. Through our partnership, we hope to generate new insights and resources that can benefit the wider community of makers and performer-makers passionate about telling their own stories. Ultimately, we aim to strengthen devising and physical theatre as vital artforms within the broader theatrical ecosystem.

Ghost Town Project

As part of my associate artistship with Ad Infinitum, we began exploring the R&D of a new theatre project with the working title ‘Ghost Town Project.’

The titular ghost town are the rows of abandoned buildings in Glodok, Jakarta left at the wake of the May 1998 riots.

The best way to describe Glodok to someone who hasn’t been there is that it is Jakarta’s Chinatown. My memory of Glodok as long as I have lived, is of driving past dilapidated buildings with walls blackened with soot, and broken windows. My parents used to have a store there, but in 1998 it was looted and burned. We talk about it matter-of-factly. My parents and my sister told me that these abandoned buildings have stood there stubbornly because their owners (most of whom had fled abroad) refused to sell, in protest against what happened and what remains unsaid, uncovered and unaccounted for in 1998.

For many Chinese-Indonesian people of my generation, the May 1998 riots remain a defining moment. The Asian financial crisis and the fall of Suharto’s dictatorship unleashed a wave of violence against ethnic Chinese communities. 

It is a historical moment that I do not feel equipped to explore on my own. However, the collaboration with Ad Infinitum under this associate artistship gave me a confidence to begin this journey.

What drew me to Ad Infinitum’s work is their unwavering commitment to capturing diverse worlds and lived experiences with depth and precision. Each piece of theirs that I have encountered has been strikingly distinct. Having witnessed their process from the inside, I understand that this is a result of the rigour they bring to their creative practice. Their approach is not dictated by style, aesthetics, or theatrical conventions but instead driven by lived experience—by a deep belief in making stories visible as a means of serving communities that have been historically marginalised.

It was also my first time in a long time, entering a rehearsal room with a collaborator to delve into a project at such an early stage—no script, no project brief, not even much of a moodboard! In fact, as we stepped into the rehearsal room, we embraced the idea that this project was a complete experiment—one in which there was a very real possibility that, by the end of the week, we might conclude the show was not feasible for us to make. Though we were all theatremakers navigating a landscape of funding and platforming that constantly demanded tangible outcomes, we understood that true trust in experimentation was the only real path to creating excellent work.

Of course, there is a part of me (the tick-boxing, word-counting, blog post writer part of me) that wishes I could say that it was all great and nice and perfect and smooth. But actually, the early part of our R&D was difficult. Rigour is difficult. Stories are difficult. The truth, sometimes, is difficult.

In my journey thusfar as a theatremaker, I often make pieces wrapped around speculative narratives that are often symbolic, abstract and poetic. Metaphors are of course powerful, but I had always wanted to push myself to create work that is more accessible, that can speak directly to the concrete social and political realities faced by people everyday. 

After a difficult second day (I was still finding it a struggle to connect and confront some of the research questions of the piece), I went on a long walk to calm down my nervous system.

As the sun set into darkness, walking through Ashley Down, I found myself gently chuckling. Who am I kidding? I thought. I had spent many months moping about how my work wasn’t being noticed as much, that I wished I could be sharing my work with wider audiences. What I realised at that moment, is that I have gotten exactly the journey I wished. Until that point, I had never made work for a large audience—it was always crafted to speak to those already attuned to its language, those with the ears to hear and eyes to see. There is a strange comfort to being misunderstood, because it allowed me to protect myself from judgment. But don’t I want to challenge myself to go beyond that? Perhaps these stories might be understood, and if they are understood they can be seen. I can be seen. In that moment, something inside of me released, and the process became a lot easier.

Luckily, the pieces we create always have a way of surprising us. You don’t make them as much as you discover them. The stories make themselves known to you as long as you listen.

Nir and I were particularly excited in exploring drawing as an act. Drawing of course denotes the marks and imprints that are made on a surface, that literally stain and irrevocably change the space. However, drawing as an act is also a series of movements—its own kind of physical theatre.

Moreover, we had to engage with the complexity and the multilayered voices inherent in this story. I was 5 years old in 1998, and while some aspects of these stories were my direct lived experience, other events and facts were being kept secret by my family for different reasons. 

Speaking to different people as part of my research—victims of violence in 1998, activists, other Chinese Indonesian artists—floated up an array of perspectives that were sometimes conflicting. Some insisted that the stories and true atrocities that occurred in May 1998 be uncovered, and justice sought. Others were tired and disturbed by having their identities squeezed into a moment of trauma, and wanted narratives of their joy and aliveness.

Like any R&D, we did not solve any problems. But when you ask a question, and ask it long enough, with patience and play, some small semblances of an answer may begin to emerge.

The abandoned buildings of Glodok stand as both physical remnants of trauma and powerful symbols of resistance—refusing to disappear, they linger, demanding a reckoning. Similarly, through this collaboration, I've discovered that my own artistic voice grows stronger when I allow myself to see and to be fully seen.

This associate artistship reminds me that the most meaningful artistic work often emerges from the spaces where we feel most challenged, most out-of-depth, and where we expect the least amount of outcomes. The questions we've raised may not have simple answers, but in the patient, playful asking, we've discovered something perhaps more valuable—a process that honors complexity while still moving toward truth that comes from lived experience.

Written by Elisabeth Gunawan.

ABOUT the associate artist role

How can we make arts organisations and the sector better serve creatives who experience marginalisation or have historically been underserved? How can bringing an artist into the heart of a company’s creative work, operations and strategic development effect positive change - for artists, organisations and the sector?

Keen to work with an artist who wants to explore these questions through a bespoke programme co-designed with us, without a fixed creative outcome in mind, we set about finding an artist to respond to these questions in whatever way they liked, drawing on their creative practice, experience and ideas to foster connections, start new conversations and provoke change.

Join our mailing list to discover more about what Elisabeth is doing with Ad Infinitum, and to find out about artist development opportunities in the future.

Background to the Associate Artist Programme

In 2021-22 Ad Infinitum held a series of consultations with artists exploring the potential structure and aims for a new associate artist programme.

Following the consultation Ad Infinitum carried out a research and development phase to test how we can develop and provoke change in our sector, through inviting artists who experience marginalisation to have a direct role in the company’s creative work, operations and strategic development, in partnership with Northern Stage and Tobacco Factory Theatres. Looking outwards, we asked artists to work with us and our partners to try to imagine a more representative, more diverse, more inclusive cultural ecology. 

We worked with artists Ife Grillo and Tracy Gillman over nine months to research and develop the programme, finding huge value in a process that was led by conversation, flexibility and varied types of exploration.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to work with Ad Infinitum, Tobacco Factory, Tracy Gillman and the wider theatre community, it's been a way for me to make sense of my own experiences and get new perspectives. It is so important to create spaces where creatives can connect with companies as partners. The relationship feels different as I'm not here to create a piece of work for a company, I'm here to work with them to ask big questions and come up with even bigger answers.” - Ife Grillo

“Collaborating with Ad Infinitum has been a rewarding experience… the opportunity to investigate meaningful relationships between organisations and freelance creatives has provoked rigorous and effective conversations about rights, rules and responsibilities which I hope will continue into the future.” - Tracy Gillman

About Ad Infinitum 

Ad Infinitum is a diverse-led company based in Bristol and dedicated to making accessible, inclusive and captivating theatre, led by Co-Artistic Directors George Mann and Nir Paldi. 

Since founding in 2007, we have dedicated our artistic platform, as a multi-award winning, nationally-reaching devising theatre company, to championing marginalised voices in theatre and reaching underserved audiences. In 2023, we became an Arts Council NPO.