“Let’s watch” says the conductor, and the teller’s story is whisked out of their hands. It lands on the stage, where the performers take ownership of it. It’s the magic of playback theatre - sitting back to see your world played transformed into theatre. But sometimes the story gets lost.

Jonathan Fox describes the performers’ job as “embodying the teller’s story theatrically, helping to bring out intended meanings and providing resonance”. It is an extraordinary task indeed. Even well trained, experienced performers can miss the mark.

If the story slips through the cracks, the teller watches on from the sidelines, implicated in a piece of theatre that doesn’t speak to them. At the end they can say so, but the ship has sailed.

What if there was an opportunity to change course midway? Could the teller have creative agency in the direction their story takes on the stage? Can we allow the teller to speak?

This intensive weekend will be a laboratory, exploring possibilities for a more active teller. The passivity of the teller is entrenched in Playback Theatre, so we will take care in how we proceed. We will consider questions such as how to invite creative direction without breaking the teller’s ‘trance’? Can we invite a more activated teller role, without demanding more of them than they want to give? Can an activated teller help us to play stories that push beyond our realm of experience? Is there a collaborative zone that allows us to embody positionalities outside our sphere of understanding?

The weekend will also incorporate character development work. Using tools from Eugenio Barba’s Theatre Anthropology, we will explore physical and vocal embodiment of characters and sense of place. This will work responsively with our investigations into an activated teller.

Cymbeline Buhler King has been a playback theatre practitioner since the late 1990s. She trained at the New York School of Playback Theatre, graduating from Leadership in 2000. She established various playback theatre companies such as Playback 170 at the Latino Pastoral Action Center in the Bronx, New York and Playback West at Western Edge Youth Arts in Footscray, Victoria, where she was Artistic Director from 2008-13. She experimented with employing playback theatre as a peacebuilding tool in Sri Lanka, establishing the long-running Theatre of Friendship network, which brings together participants from four regions across Sri Lanka including Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala participants who had been separated by civil war. She has published on this work in Q1 journal Research in Drama Education, with an article titled 'A participatory arts application of Playback Theatre to transitional justice in Sri Lanka'. Cymbeline was on the IPTN board from 2011-15. She has also applied playback theatre in the development of intersubjective Fiction, which is a method for generating artistic works in collaboration with communities. She wrote a PhD about Intersubjective Fiction. 

Venue: Briswest Centre, 32 Latrobe Terrace, Paddington 4064, Brisbane
Times: Saturday 16th August 10am - 5pm, Sunday 17th August, 10am - 4pm
Fee: $200 - concession is available
Contact: Neil (nfsimmo@gmail.com) or Christine (christine.f.currie@gmail.com or 0424418766). Booking is essential.

Solid as rock and flowing like water: on the art of conducting in Playback Theatre

Gerry Orkin. Sydney. 13 and 14 September

Conducting a playback theatre performance is complicated! At the heart of the role is the art of group leadership, which involves meeting the needs of each moment, as well as attending to the different needs of tellers, performers and the audience. With so much going on, how do we create atmosphere, build rapport and hold an inclusive and safe space? And how can we also be spontaneous, curious, sensitive and vulnerable?

When is it time to be like a rock, and when is it better to be like water?

In this workshop our exploration of the conductor’s role will occur in the context of the arc of a performance and with reference to the elements of narrative reticulation: story, guidance, atmosphere and spontaneity. Narrative reticulation is a framework for understanding what elements need to be managed in order to create an effective Playback Theatre performance. The framework was developed by Playback Theatre co-founder Jonathan Fox.

There’ll be plenty of opportunities to practise conducting, as well as to tell stories and perform on our stage. 

Participants will leave the workshop with a deeper understanding of the role, but the workshop is not just for those who already conduct stories in rehearsals or performances (or who hope to do so at some point). Everyone in playback benefits from a better understanding the complexity of the conductor’s job!

Venue: The Settlement, 17 Edward Street, Darlington, NSW 2008
Dates: 13 & 14 September 2025
Times: 13 September 10am - 5pm, 14 September 10am - 4pm
Cost: $210 (if you are travelling from Sydney, the Blue Mountains or Canberra), $180 (if you are travelling from elsewhere e.g Melbourne, Darwin, Hobart, Whoop-whoop). If you prefer you can pay in instalments.

If you can only attend on the Saturday contact me to discuss what that’ll mean, and to talk about the cost. Attending only on Sunday doesn’t make sense given the way the workshop is structured. 

Interested? Please email me at gerry.orkin@gmail.com ASAP.