AGAINST REPRESENTATION
Workshop at Teatro Camploy, Verona
> directed by Luca Giacomoni
What remains of theatre when representation no longer constitutes its foundation? When the character ceases to be the centre of the action, linearity no longer structures the meaning of a story, and the stage is no longer called upon to produce an illusion? This workshop begins with these questions. It offers neither techniques nor a method, but rather a practice of subtraction: exercises designed to remove obstacles, resistances, and masks. For if the purpose of theatre is indeed to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature – as Shakespeare reminds us – then such a gesture is impossible without first turning that mirror towards oneself.
The workshop is open to anyone who recognises the stage as a site of inquiry and wishes to approach it as an open practice, in which the crisis of form is not a loss but the condition from which a new gesture may emerge. In this sense, being “against representation” does not mean rejecting it, but resisting it and inhabiting its limit. It means questioning what takes place between the one who performs the act and the one who bears witness to it – and what continues to take place even when we no longer know how to name it.
Dates
From Monday 7 to Wednesday 9 September 2026
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Teatro Camploy
Via Cantarane 32 Verona, Italy
Up to 15 graduates
of the Carlo Goldoni Theatre Academy
selected through an open call
Information and registration :
accademia@teatrostabileveneto.it
TO REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS
Workshop at La Boutonnière, Paris
> directed by Luca Giacomoni
For years, following Peter Brook’s advice, I carefully kept theatrical creation separate from what is commonly called “inner research.” You’ll see – he told me – with time and practice, these two dimensions will eventually come together naturally, without forcing anything. Today, this feels self-evident to me. There are not two distinct spaces, but a single movement in which one reality nourishes the other in both mysterious and tangible ways. Encountering the research of Jerzy Grotowski, through some of his former collaborators, made this continuity even more concrete, until it became evident to me that work on physical actions is inseparable from work on oneself.
From this perspective, something in theatre has shifted. It is no longer a matter of illustrating, or even representing, but of moving through states of presence in which action engages the whole being. Perhaps that is what it is, fundamentally: a passage. Not toward some spectacular elsewhere, but toward a place already known and yet forgotten. As though something within us had glimpsed Ithaca without ever truly reaching its shores – and had since continued learning the way back to its native land. These few days of workshop are part of this exploration: refining listening, re-engaging the body in action, and cultivating a more open attention to oneself. And perhaps recalling the profound necessity of the theatrical act: one of the rare moments in which the invisible can still become a concrete and shared experience.
Dates
From Saturday 26 to Wednesday 30 September 2026
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., at La Boutonnière
25 rue Popincourt, 75011 Paris
Fee / 520 euros per person
440 euros for students
and job seekers
Information and registration :
contact@centrehagiasophia.com
A DISCORDANT HARMONY
Workshop at UCLouvain, Brussels
> directed by Luca Giacomoni
Some time ago, a playwright friend told me about her experience in L’Aquila just after the earthquake that devastated the city. Amid the rubble, she said, everyone seemed instinctively to know what to do: some searched for survivors, others carried water, moved stones, welcomed the injured, or simply tried to remain present alongside those who were there. The gestures were different, as were the rhythms, yet everyone shared the same horizon and the same urgency. For a time, the usual hierarchies seemed suspended: no more fixed roles, no more clearly defined social categories, but rather a provisional community confronted with something greater than itself. And yet each human being remained irreducibly singular: with their own memory, history, identity, and way of acting.
Can theatre, this secular ritual, teach us something about this way of being together? If so, does the tragic chorus not designate precisely this discordant harmony – to borrow the expression of the philosopher Sophie Klimis – capable of allowing the individual and the collective to exist together? Over the course of these few days, we will seek this common space where differences are not erased but respond to one another. The work will draw on physical actions, voice, rhythm and collective composition – not in order to produce a form or a result, but to approach a state of openness and availability. For, as Plato reminds us in his final dialogue: “One who has not taken part in a chorus has not been educated.”
Dates
From Monday 5 to Saturday 10 October 2026
UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles
43 Boulevard du Jardin Botanique
B-1000 Brussels
Workshop reserved for students
of UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles.
Limited to 15 participants
Information and registration :
sophie.klimis@uclouvain.be