Bringing together artists, educators and researchers from across the globe, Season 2 explored performance, pedagogy and advocacy through the lenses of intersectionality, hybridity and collective futures. The conversations sought new pathways towards resilience, relevance and global connectedness.
Embodied Poetics and the Drama School Mumbai are pleased to be joined by the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies. Curators Mbongeni N Mtshali and Mwenya Kabwe will work with Amy Russell and Jehan Manekshaw, to bring other exciting contributors onboard to explore our ‘unrehearsed futures’. The conversations with participants from across the globe, continue to look at questions of performance, pedagogy, practice, critique, and investigate themes of intersectionality, hybridity, advocacy, and through those, find the opportunities that lie ahead for theatre’s transcendence to a new resilience and relevance.
Practitioners reflect on what they’re leaving behind post-pandemic: commercialised art, passive pedagogy, workaholism, and toxic spaces — embracing slowness, joy, and authentic practice instead.
Nisha Abdulla explores her anti-oppressive theatre practice, centering the dissenting body, curiosity, and inclusive space-holding as tools for liberation in India’s complex socio-political landscape.
In a pioneering Fishbowl format, participants shared first-person testimonies about experiences of the feminine, witnessed by the group in a profound collective act of listening.
Sophia Stepf examines the inherent power imbalances of Global North-South artistic collaborations, reflecting honestly on privilege, colonial funding structures, and her Maji Maji Flava project.
Jemma Kahn explores her irreverent use of Kamishibai to deliver provocative adult theatre through humour, intimacy, and the safety of a wooden box.
Clark Baim and Pablo Gershanik explore ethical frameworks for staging personal trauma in theatre, presenting the Drama Spiral and Intimate Models as tools for safe,
Rodolfo García Vázquez describes SP Escola de Teatro’s radical non-hierarchical, decolonial model, building autonomous artists through community-rooted, modular, and interdisciplinary pedagogy in São Paulo.
Marc Weinblatt reflects on Theatre of the Oppressed’s evolution, advocating for humility, trauma-informed practice, and shifting focus toward engaging those who hold power and privilege.
Rucera Seethal draws on her experience at Chimurenga, Pro Helvetia, and the National Arts Festival to reimagine artist-led, mycelium-like networks for sustainable African arts organising.
Norman Taylor and Ellie Nixon explore pedagogy as a process of mutual discovery, questioning, and cumulative observation rather than the transmission of fixed techniques.
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