IPPT 2025 Graz: Transformation as joint research - Birgit Nordby Løvlie and Gabrielle Moleta

11th annual meeting of the International Platform for Performer Training 23-26 January 2025, Graz (Austria) Failure, sensitivity and committed relationships in performer training

Birgit Nordby Løvlie and I attended this year’s IPPT held at Kunst Uni Graz in late January. Building on our research project in Transformation and Imaginative Improvisation from last June, we submitted a proposal which was accepted. Our practical presentation formed part of the first day of the three day symposium.

The focus of this year’s IPPT conference was to explore how responsible relationships can be developed and maintained in performer training. Birgit and I spoke about our joint research in Transformation, and with the focus on ‘Animal as Transformation’ within this context. The stimulating three days were made up of longer and shorter presentations interspersed with panel discussions. These were grouped into different topics of focus which included: Practically handling training, training as a heterogeneous discursive space and training as joint research.

Our interest in participating in the IPPT and presenting work was in part because of these topics and in part due to the practical ‘workshop’ style presentation format. Alongside dynamic presentations and discussions encompassing artists and theatre pedagogues from Europe, India, UK and Thailand, were also performances in the evenings. The Graz team, fronted by Martin Woldan and Daniel Rademacher, ran the event with alacrity, insightful preparation and huge generosity. Birgit and I loved that we were sometimes working in a rehearsal space that had formally been home to horses!

We were welcomed, given time to meet and mingle in thee evening before the symposium proper and then guided meticulously through each stage of what turned out to be a provocative three days full of confluences of approaches and energising meetings.

A new layer to this year’s event being trialled by the Graz team- and for me a highlight of the symposium- was the inclusion of a group of their first year acting students. These students, present throughout, were available to become ‘our students’ for our practical work. This, of course made all the difference, bringing the exercises to life for the observers whilst giving Birgit and me the chance to meet and discover our work afresh with this engaged group!