Samra Mayanja – Artist in Residence
- Year
- 2025
In March 2025 we welcomed Samra Mayanja as Artists in Residence alongside Claudia Palazzo and Symoné.
As part of the residency, the artists were supported by LADA to develop peer-to-peer artist networks. Samra Mayanja hosted a study day for artists to explore the Live Art Research Collection.
please believe me…
please believe me… is a series of dinners, conversations and archive deep dives for artists concerned with liveness, pedagogy, film and other relational practices.
For this iteration Samra invited a group of artists she has an established relationship with to explore the Live Art Research Collection. These artists in turn invited one or two others to join. The invited artists span a multiplicity of performance practices, actively cultivate communities and work in collaborative ways. The day was an attempt to understand what benefit an archival investigation can bring to an artist’s work and to them personally.
Samra Mayanja, The Call Centre, 2024. Image by an audience member
Samra Mayanja
Samra Mayanja is an artist working across performance, installation, film and writing. Her practice considers the illegibility of the body and the absurdist impulse to seek what is irretrievably lost. A continuously hopeful but seemingly futile act of searching runs through her work and manifests in performances that blend improvisation, slapstick, poetic monologues and tender vocalisations. Samra has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and theatres, including Cambridge Junction, The Oval, Centre for Live Art in Yorkshire, Somerset House, Tetley (Leeds), MAMA (Rotterdam), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Transmediale (Berlin) and LIVE Biennale (Vancouver). Her solo exhibition The Living and the Stale explored what it means to lose and be lost and took place at The Tetley in 2023. Samra writes weekly about performance, audiences and the loose choreography that is humanity on her Substack P3RFORMANC3 PRINC3SS.
More informationParticipating Artists
Seyi Adelekun
Willy Amott
Rebecca De La Casas
Lucas Evamy
Anastasia Frey Gang
El Gold
Meredith Kenton
Vicky Kosasle
Giuli Das Lago
Bri Leung
Dani Marcel
Ben Selzig
Gianna T
Moritz Tibes
Meeting Points
To mark the end of the residency, LADA’s Director, Mary Osborn, spoke to the three artists together, reflecting on their different residency activities and their relationship with discipline, community and visibility.
More informationSamra Mayanja + Mary Osborn – SCREAM CHOIR
SCREAM CHOIR is a workshop for people who have ever had words stuck in their throat, have struggled to speak and/or police their thoughts.
SCREAM CHOIR is led by Samra Mayanja, who has initiated several SCREAM CHOIR events in the past. For this edition, Samra was joined by Mary Osborn (Live Art Development Agency).
The group was formed of participants from a range of practices: theatre makers, a flautist, a spoken word poet, etc.
Mary presented a story of her voice, from school productions to Edinburgh Fringe and on to introducing students and researchers to the Study Room. With guides from her vocal coach and anatomy diagrams Mary led vocal improvisations.
Participants were invited to speak, scream and listen. The aim was to listen to each other, make soothing sounds and improvise together. The group tentatively tittered, mimicked and echoed each other, extrapolated out sounds, crescendoed and fell silent.
Samra Mayanja and Riot + the Ether – THE CALL CENTRE
In February 2026, Samra curated a special edition of THE CALL CENTRE, co-presented with Newington Green Meeting House.
Curated and hosted by Samra Mayanja, THE CALL CENTRE has become a monthly must-see in London’s Live Art calendar. Initiated in and usually taking place in her studio, Samra has created a framework not only about, but in service to, that difficult task that we engage with every day, which is to speak. To say ourselves and to speak ourselves, and to make the decision with every word and every breath not to hide.
For each CALL CENTRE, Samra invites cross-disciplinary artists and writers to share live work with and alongside her. This framework comes from her impulse to contextualise her own work through the artists whose work she loves.
In this special edition of THE CALL CENTRE Samra stepped out of her 21 seater studio and joined the long-line of dissenting voices that have spoken out in the chapel at Newington Green Meeting House.
Joining her was the Riot + the Ether band who presented ‘the impossible big’.
The evening included a performance from Samra, songs from Riot + the Ether, some technical difficulties, a date, a Q&A, Indie Sleaze fancy dress competition, socialising, llamas and more!
THE CALL CENTRE and SCREAM CHOIR were curated and hosted by Samra Mayanja; co-presented by Newington Green Meeting House, LADA and Samra Mayanja; and supported by the Grand Camp Maisie Fund.
The Grand Camp Maisie Fund was created by the will of the late LGBTQIA+ leading gay rights campaigner activist and journalist Andrew Lumsden. New Unity at Newington Green Meeting House is grateful to be awarded support for this event as part of a wider programme curated by independent producer Nikki Tomlinson and New Unity’s General Manager Nick Toner. Content produced and published as part of the programme does not necessarily reflect the position of the Grand Camp Maisie Fund.
Samra Mayanja, THE CALL CENTRE, 2026. Image Jemima Yong.
Riot + the Ether, THE CALL CENTRE, 2026. Image Jemima Yong.
THE CALL CENTRE, 2026. Image Jemima Yong.
THE CALL CENTRE, 2026. Image Jemima Yong.
Banner image credit:
Samra Mayanja, The Call Centre, 2026. Image Jemima Yong.
Also
Samra Mayanja and Riot + the Ether – THE CALL CENTRE
Artist in Residence Samra Mayanja curates a special edition of THE CALL CENTRE co-presented with Newington Green Meeting House.
Read moreSamra Mayanja – SCREAM CHOIR
SCREAM CHOIR is led by Samra Mayanja, who has initiated two impromptu SCREAM CHOIR events in the past. For this edition, Samra will be joined by Mary Osborn (Live Art Development Agency) and they will focus on stories of the voice, vocal improvisations, speaking, screaming and listening.
Read moreMeeting Points – Artists in Residence 2025
An interview with Samra Mayanja, Claudia Palazzo and Symoné, reflecting on their time as Artists in Residence in 2025.
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