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Online Conversation Hub March 2016

Date:

begins Saturday 27 February and finishes Friday 18 March.

Theme:

The freedom of the teller’s chair

This exchange hub will focus on the theme of maintaining the freedom of the teller’s chair and the many questions that arise around this.

In playback theatre the importance of everyone having the opportunity to tell their story, to have access to the teller’s chair is a primary value. Most of us will be involved in ongoing effort of developing our capacity to bring this value to life in our playback work.

It is a very fine and commendable ideal, however what is our actual practice and experience? In this exchange hub we are interested to come to know from each other what we do when for example:

• the teller in their story expresses very different values from us
• we become aware of a prejudice in ourselves
• we find ourselves judging or rejecting a teller and their story
• a culture of the ‘politically correct’ creeps into a performance or company life

There are many questions and challenges here, including whether it is actually desirable that the teller’s chair is a free and open space to tell, and how free and open a space is this in reality.

Let’s talk to each other about what we are thinking and what we have been learning from our experience in this area of our playback work either as a conductor, actor, musician, teller, audience member.

We look forward to getting together with you and learning from each other.

Bev Hosking and Kris Plowman will co-ordinate these conversation hubs.

To be involved – you will need to sign up the conversation by registering at //iptn.boards.net on or before 25 February, 2016

For enquiry in registration: Please email: Jori Pitkanen

IPTN Vision
The IPTN provides an independent, inclusive and global platform that strengthens Playback Theatre Practice through connection and mutual influence.

A conversation hub
Building on the vision of the IPTN, we want to strengthen our community of practice by encouraging an exchange of experience and thinking about our playback theatre work. We are keen that we can continue to learn from each other through a process of telling, listening and responding.

We want to introduce the idea of an online conversation hub. Several times a year we are going to propose a subject area that we can explore together. We are not looking to find definitive answers to a question, or to find a solution to a problem, rather, the intention is to engage with each other and to listen to different ideas so that we can extend our understanding of this work that we are all involved with. In this way we may be stimulated to find some new pathways forward in our own practice.

A conversation will last for three weeks. Each time we will create a group that you will need to sign into beforehand in order to take part. We will close the group as we begin the exchange. You will be notified of the dates and the topic of each hub via email and they will posted on the website.

We are still learning how to make this as lively and participatory as possible. This time in order to reduce anonymity and bystanding (stances we want to discourage) we want everyone who signs in to introduce themselves so we know who you are, and we would like to encourage active participation so that we are creating something together.