Paul Paschal is an artist, writer, researcher, dramaturg and performer. He was born and raised in Dublin, moved to the UK in 2009, and has been living in Nottingham since 2016. His work addresses and embraces relational complexities, unflattering feeling, and perversity. Through his blog Ghosts, Guest Hosts, Demons, Stewards, he reflects on the landscape of publicly-funded arts in the UK.

The majority of Paul’s artistic work is undertaken with Rohanne Udall as Salamèche. Beyond this, Paul works in a variety of roles:

In 2025, he completed a TECHNE-funded PhD at the University of Roehampton, entitled ‘Faggot Hospitality: A queer ethics of vulnerable encounter through the theatre of Chris Goode‘. This project uses the public writing of the once-renowned and now-disgraced theatre artist Chris Goode to address the complex ethics of subjecting oneself and others to overwhelming and destabilising encounters. To assess the complex ethics of such practices, this thesis develops a concept of ‘faggot hospitality’, by critically responding to scholarship reflecting on gay male sexual subcultures – specifically, Tim Dean, João Florêncio and Leo Bersani’s writing on ‘barebacking’, ‘pig sex’ and ‘cruising’, respectively.

His writing practice developed through documenting the work of a generation of UK experimental dance artists – including Neve Harrington, Tim Spooner, Jamila Johnson-Small, and Lucy Suggate – for platforms such as Exeunt and DRAFF (2016-2018). He regularly presents his writing in both arts and academic conferences; and has written essays on embroidered wounds for the journal Metaphor as Metamorphosis (July 2021), on the un/sustainability of grassroots artist studios for New Critique (December 2021), and on the tensions of pursuing artistic research in UK universities for Dance Research (December 2023; in collaboration with Efrosini Protopapa). In 2023, he developed his first chapbook of poetry, Love to all lovers, which chronicles some of the intimacies and exchanges at play in gay male hookup culture.

Paul’s work as a dramaturg arises from the dialogues he sustains with a number of artists across a range of disciplines. This dramaturgical support responds the particular needs of each collaborator and context, and can include conversation, facilitation, administration, producing, directing, documentation and writing. Some of the projects he has supported include: Christopher Matthews’ my body’s no.1 (Sadler’s Wells, London, 2020), Jez Dolan and Ingibjörg Yr Skarphéthinsdóttir’s Is He On The Line…? (Heads Up Festival, Hull, 2019), Gareth Cutter’s Come Closer (Home, Manchester, 2019), Amy Lawrence’s TUCH (Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2018), Andy Edwards’ In Burrows (Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 2018), and Sam Pardes’s What have I got to show for it? (Screwed Festival, Bunker Theatre, London, 2017).

Paul has also worked as a performer with a number of directors, choreographers, and artists, including Beth Kettal (The Lowry, 2022), Paul Kindersley (One Thoresby Street, 2022), Hamish MacPherson (Spill Festival, Ipswich, 2018), Vlatka Horvat (Hebbel am Uffer, 2017), Tuuli Malla (Nahmad Projects, 2016), Chris Goode (The Yard Theatre, London, 2015-6) and GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN (Spill Festival, 2014). These projects have taken place in theatres, galleries, foyers, private homes, parks and other outdoor sites. They have been improvised and scripted, text- and movement-based, and have involved significant amounts of intimate and direct engagement with audiences.

As an organiser, Paul collaborates with others to foster spaces for dialogue and exchange. Alongside the curatorial projects he undertakes as Salamèche, he regularly convenes spaces for artists across disciplines to develop and share experimental practice in both grassroots and institutional contexts (Chisenhale Dance Space, Fabric, Chaos Magic, ICA, Bidston Observatory). In 2020, Paul collaborated with other students at the University of Roehampton to protest the mass redundancies in academic staff – convening a series of open forums that invited staff, students, management to public conversation to address the cuts. In 2022, he co-organised an archive of testimonies addressing abusive practices in UK theatre and performance.

He regularly teaches and delivers workshops in art-making and performance, including at Fabric (2023), Nottingham Contemporary (2022), University of Roehampton (2022), Mansions of the Future (2021), Siobhan Davies Studios (2021), University Of Central Lancashire (2019). He has recently worked as a mentor with Dance Art Journal (2023) and East Midlands Visual Arts Network (2022) to support emerging artists and writers.

Other major projects include: an exhibition Lost u for a sec with Sam Pardes and Eunji Sung, exploring the choreographic potentials of video calls (Phoenix Gallery, Leicester, 2018); an e-book We Took Photographs with Simon Ellis and Hamish MacPherson, reflecting on friction in touch-based somatic practices and artistic collaboration (S’ALA, Sassari, 2018); and a performance duet the ground, the highest point with Andy Edwards, experimenting with the juxtaposition of improvised poetry and dance (Z-arts, Manchester, 2015).

The photographs of Paul at the top of this page are of him performing in Hamish MacPherson’s No Climax Yet (2018) and in Paul Kindersley’s Speak Your Story Into Life (2022). The other portrait was taken by Cheniece Warner in 2022 at Independent Dance. The embroidery is Calendula (for Éimhín), made in 2021. The linoprint is from 2022; a series of prints that Paul makes for his friends and collaborators at the end of each year. The photograph of the busy room was a poetry event called Read ’em and weep that Paul co-organised at Chaos Magic in Nottingham in June 2023.