AFTER THE EMPTY SPACE: FROM TRADITIONAL SETTINGS TO NEW CREATIVE ECOLOGIES

International Platform for Performer Training | 9th edition
12th-15th January 2023 | Fondazione Orizzonti d’Arte | Chiusi | Italy

In his 1968 book, the late Peter Brook contrasts the essentiality of the actor walking on a bare stage with the plethora of frills that populates theatrical space and that often thwarts the graceful simplicity of the relationship between performers and spectators. It is on the ‘simple’ nature of relationships in space as they pertain to training that we intend to focus, and on how they are foundational to traditional performative settings and to new creative ecologies.

Indeed, stage space is not an absolute entity, but rather an ‘interdependent function of theatrical composition’ (Solga 2019), where the succession of the blockings and the changing mutual spatial relations of props and agents are key information for both performers and audience. The performer’s understanding and mastery of scenic space is a set of psychophysical competences mostly acquired through practical apprenticeship. It is a necessary achievement for effective stage presence, and it impacts on the quality of voice, gesture, posture, and on the management and captivation of the audience’s attention. As technology has changed the performance space over the centuries, performers have always been called to respond accordingly.

Space is understood as a growingly complex and ‘multi-dimensional’ matter since 1968 and performers and trainers are now required to have an updated mastery and understanding. In the past decade, our digital lives have become denser and inextricable from most of our offline activities; the pandemic has forcibly introduced trainers and trainees to new forms of space-sharing for which, most discovered, they were not entirely unprepared. As hybrid training is here to stay, the artistic, technical, and pedagogical import of physically discontinuous spaces calls for further practical engagement and scholarly inquiry.

New creative ecologies, which include rural areas as spaces for sustainable activity within natural settings, are needed to support artistic production, cooperation, and innovative thinking: as environmental changes redesign the world, and reveal a non-anthropocentric planetary order, theatre-makers are called to make sense of overwhelming powers and of unstoppable transformations that obey laws that humans cannot amend. This resembles the return of the untamable forces from the Greek Tragedy governing the world by the rule of inevitability and consequence. And it evokes spaces that are, at the same time, sacred, political, scientific, and unfolding within an intergenerational timescale. Once again, theatre-makers are called to consider and measure up against those forces.

The 9th edition of the International Platform for Performer Training, held in the Italian rural and archaeological town of Chiusi (12th-15th January 2023), welcomes contributions along the following lines:

– Spatiality in performer training within psychophysical and post-psychophysical frameworks

– Practices of Spatiality in western and non-western performance traditions

– Emerging Hybrid Workspaces: New Practices in Performer Training

– New Creative Ecologies: Non-anthropocentric Spaces, Geopoetics and Climate Change in performer training

FORMATS FOR BOTH ONSITE AND ONLINE PRESENTATIONS

30-40 minutes for papers, and 50 minutes for workshops. Proposals should include: 

1. Name, affiliation (if any), plus short biographical note (150 words max)
2. Abstract and information on the ideal mode of presentation (500 words max)
3. Technical requirements (AV, type and size of space, special technical setup etc.)

The deadline for proposals is 26 October 2022 via the online form. Applicants will be notified by early November.

MODES OF PARTICIPATION

 While presence in person is quintessential to live performance and preferable for mutual knowledge and networking, the conference offers hybrid modes of participation through direct connection with selected participants that will help effective digital exchange. 

Registration for participation is currently OPEN. Please fill in this online form by 1 November 2022.

Please note that places for both physical and online attendance are limited. While participation is free of charge, participants are expected to attend the conference in its entirety.

SCHEDULE
12^th January 2023 – Recommended arrival date. Dinner. 13^th January 2023 – Presentations. Discussion.

14^th January 2023 – Presentations. Afternoon workshops. Discussion
15^th January 2023 – Planning session. Networking panel for EU funding schemes

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Angelo Romagnoli (University of Kent, Conference Coordinator), Marco Brinzi (Fondazione Orizzonti), Małgorzata Jabłońska (National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw), Esa Kirkkopelto (University of Lund) and Paul Allain (University of Kent).

IPPT Italy Team

Arianna Fè (Producer Fondazione Orizzonti), Giannetto Marchettini (Vice President of Fondazione Orizzonti), Jacopo Bottani, Sofia Guidi, Valerio Leoni.

SUSTAINABILITY

Our platform is particularly concerned with the current trends of climate change. The rural town of Chiusi is easily reachable by train: we encourage participants to choose means of transportations with lower CO2 emissions.

CONTACTS

For any further information please contact the Conference Coordinator Mr. Angelo Romagnoli (University of Kent) via our email ippt.italy@gmail.com or WhatsApp +393471023843. You will also receive an invitation to join our mailing list ipptitaly@googlegroups.com for further communications and information on travels and accommodation.

IPPT is a nomadic community that foregrounds the potential of crossing frontiers and harnessing the positivity of difference, with a particular interest in/ focus on the development of performer training in theatre, dance and performance.