Els Roobroeck (Kortrijk, 1981) graduated in 2004 as a master in Science of Speech Language and Audiology at the Ghent University. In 2008 she got her bachelor degree as a Drama Teacher/Director of Theatre at the Maastricht Theatre Academy. In 2016 she founded the Belgian-Dutch Music Theatre Company COVAR.
Besides her artistic work for COVAR, Els works part-time as Senior Arts Education Officer at the Maastricht Youth Theatre School of Arts. She’s frequently invited as a guest director of theatre and guest teacher, amongst others for the Maastricht Theatre Academy, where she teaches the course ‘Directing Youth’.
Els’ projects describe themselves as interdisciplinary tellings. Stories who claim their place in topicality by text, form and content. Els loves to embrace new encounters, research and experiments, framed improvisations and challenges that push theatre’s perimeters. This way she models new - often inter- and transdisciplinary- big and small stories.
Els sees her work as a social engagement to tempt people into a world of feeling, bobbing up and down, whilst contemplating. A world appreciating the ordinary and inviting the extraordinary. A central theme within the work of Els is the tipping point between childhood and coming of age. Discovering those key moments in life that translates themselves into a wider perspective. She is also fascinated by biological and social anomalies and likes to observe how people try to deal with them. The tragic-comic field between what is and what could/can be is a driving force in her work.
