The Room Listened
What the Stars Remember
At the Performing Lines Regional Artist Residency, Elise Romaszko shared a meditation that felt less like a presentation and more like an invitation.
It was an invitation to slow down. To wonder. To imagine ourselves in motion through time, memory, and space. The room listened. Fully. Without interruption. Without translation.
Her words held the space, and the space held her.
Elise Romaszko on-site at the Performing Lines Task Force artist residency 2025.
“I have a disability but I use it to my ability. What the Stars Remember is my work, and it comes from my imagination. At the residency I got to perform it and share it with other artists. I was with other artists, and my work mattered.”
This moment sits at the heart of What the Stars Remember. A work shaped by listening, by questions rather than answers, and by the belief that imagination is a serious tool for navigating the world.
Aunty Rhoda, Sally, Lane and Elise Romaszko. Performing Lines Tas 2025
“Independent practice is where brave ideas are born. It’s where artists test questions before they become works, and where risk is not only allowed but required.
Too often, those spaces are quietly closed to ensemble-based artists. Not by intention, but by systems that assume independence only looks one way.”
Performing Lines Tasmania has long understood that independent practice doesn’t only live outside organisations. Through their Regional Artist Residency, they continue to partner with Second Echo Ensemble, making room for ensemble-based artists to step into independent development spaces without being asked to leave their ways of working behind.
This matters.
Performing Lines Tasmania, Class of 2025
“SEE artists are not visitors to the profession. They are shaping it. Their practices stretch, spark, and complicate the field. They work collectively and individually, and their contributions deepen the ecology rather than sitting at its edges.
They belong in every room where the future of contemporary performance is being imagined.”
The residency reminded us what becomes possible when producing, interrogation, and care meet radical equity.
“The room expands. New ideas take root. Artists become visible not as exceptions, but as collaborators in a shared landscape of practice.”
We’re deeply grateful to Sinsa Mansell, the Performing Lines Tasmania team, and the independent artists who brought generosity, courage, and rigour to the weekend. This was a space where listening was active, time was held with care, and artists were trusted to arrive as they are.
Read an excerpt of Elise’s improvised meditation, shared during the residency and now woven into the evolving constellation of What the Stars Remember.
