Paolo Gruni is a theatre director, dramaturg, performer, and educator. He has collaborated with several companies and institutions across Italy, Belgium, Canada, France, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and the Republic of Northern Macedonia. He has directed performances and training programs in traditional theatres, art galleries, schools, refugee centers, correctional facilities, as well as other diverse contexts. He owns a BA in Philosophy from the University of Florence, an MA in Theatre and Performative Practices from University College Cork, and he is currently a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Concordia University Montreal.

Paolo’s research-creation combines Western laboratory theatre techniques, studies on expanded consciousness, post-humanist discourse, and Indigenous epistemologies. He explores the potential of performance as an activist aesthetic practice engaging the embodied consciousness in its wholeness, intersubjectivity, and relationality to transform human cognition and relation to others, the self, and the world(s).