International Theatre Institute conference on Conflict and Care
My final official commitment on this month-long European trip was to take part in a panel discussion at an ITI Germany Conference in Frankfurt.
The German chapter of the International Theatre Institute is among the more active chapters of this decades-old body (it was launched after the second world war). The ITI has hosted an Academy with 20 fellows over the last year. Two fellows curated a conference as part of Theater der Welt on the theme of Conflict and Care. I was invited to participate in the opening panel together with Chiaki Soma of Japan and Nora Amin of Egypt (now resident in Berlin) on the theme of dispute as a part of transformation with the performing arts and its institutions. One of the major struggles of independent theatre-makers, particularly those who have arrived more recently in Germany, is to how to break into German mainstream theatre.