Rethinking Touring: Two Days at PTEQ's Equitable Touring Conference at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

Two days at the Equitable Touring conference at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, organised by the Centre for Performance, Technology, and Equity (PTEQ), and my head is still full.

Day one opened with Arts Council England presenting new research on the state of touring, followed by panels and roundtables that kept circling a shared question: what does performance touring look like when it is organised around equity, ecology, and community, and what infrastructure would that actually require?

A highlight for me was the roundtable on process-led touring with Richard Gregory (Quarantine), David Shearing FRSA (Variable Matter), and Jennifer Jackson, modered by David Harradine (Fevered Sleep). What happens when you tour a way of making a performance in place of a finished product? Quarantine's 12 Last Songs, Variable Matter's World Kiosk, and Jackson's WRESTLELADSWRESTLE each offered a different answer, and each raised honest questions about capacity, safeguarding, and the economics of making participatory work. 

Later in the day I attended The Rerouting: Equity and Infrastructure for Touring Performance panel, chaired by Kate Elswit, which explored how the future of touring depends on building new kinds of infrastructure that place equity and ecology at the centre. Talks by Tekena Gasper Mark on which stories are able to move from the Niger Delta, Dr Margie Medlin on dance and technology integration, and Jack Hardiker on access aesthetics and spatial narrative each grounded that proposition in practice.

It was also a joy to see (and become a player) in PROJECT 1961's open R&D rehearsals for their hybrid theatrical and gaming experience 'Sound and Fury', which reimagines Shakespeare's Macbeth within the virtual world of an online computer game. 

Day two was a Devoted and Disgruntled session led by Improbable, where we self-curated the conversations. I was glad to initiate a discussion on non-arts spaces for touring, where I was joined by Bryce Lease and others thinking through found spaces and created spaces, rural touring, and what technology and digitality might offer these contexts. This sits close to my own doctoral research on distance and hybrid performance, and the exchange was generous and insightful.

Beyond the sessions, it was lovely to spend time with everyone at Central: my supervisors Kate Elswit and Liam Jarvis, and fellow staff members and PhDs from PTEQ including Rae Birchley, Melanie Wilson, Munotida Chinyanga, Jack H., Dr Danny Scott, Adam Ray Braun and many others. 

Grateful to PTEQ for convening a room with deep care and intention.