I am a singer-actor with a keen interest in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stage. Understanding the past on its own terms and putting that understanding in the service of present-day audiences has been the main concern of my performing and research activities to date. I am based in The Hague, where I have combined both my collaborations with local ensembles and my teaching at the Royal Conservatory with a strong research component.

My interest in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century performance practice goes back to my forming years as an early music singer at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Rehearsing early repertoire within this specialized environment promoted an inquisitive attitude regarding the practices of the past and the reasons for studying them. Many questions about singing demanded a multidisciplinary approach – one with theatrical practice at its centre – and after finishing my studies I began collaborating with theatre scholars with the intent of experimenting with historical acting techniques. Important themes in my practice based research have been rhetorical acting, declamation, second nature, embodiment, and the doctrine of the passions, and one of the theatrical genres I have investigated more deeply was eighteenth-century melodrama. My current research is devoted to onstage facial expression in mid-eighteenth century London, and what it can tell us about a rhetorical tradition of acting based on the expression of the passions.