What is a home group:
Home Groups are a closed group of up to 20 people that provide an opportunity for participants to develop closer connections, explore aspects of the Gathering theme and Values Statement and to process their experience of the Gathering.
Each Home Group will be facilitated by one or two experienced playbackers who will allow both space to reflect on the Gathering as it unfolds but also to delve more deeply into the theme they are offering. Most of the Gathering sessions will be created using an open space approach (each session will have different leadership and participants) however the Home Groups will be closed providing an opportunity to build connection with the facilitators and other participants.
Expressing a preference:
Read the outlines of the home groups below and then list the groups in order of your preference on the form to the right (on this form). We do have a limit on the number that can participate in each group so not everyone will be placed in their first preference of Home Group.
Just us - Justice? Facilitator: Paula Novotna
Just Us – Justice? has two aims: the first is to create a space for participants to check in on their experience of the gathering. The second aim is to explore the Just Us – Justice? theme which is inspired by the quote from Terry Pratchett: 'there is no justice, there is just us'.
For those of us who feel the weight of current injustices, how do we re-source within our Playback community? Each home group session will start with a space to ground, where we come into connection with ourselves. Next, we will warm-up to our home group and to the Playing It Forward conference theme. We will invite reflection on privilege and unconscious bias using embodied modalities within the Playback and Theatre of the Oppressed repertoires. Above all, we aim to deepen our connections and explore how each of us can Play It Forward.
Before the conference, you are invited to read more about Project Implicit and take an “Implicit Association Test”: see https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.
Paula’s biography
Paula Novotna is a playback actor, social justice lawyer, facilitator, storyteller and poet. Paula has been an actor in three Playback companies since 2009, allowing her to deepen her ensemble work in these different contexts. She is a current member of Playback Theatre Sydney.
Paula was born in then-Communist Czechoslovakia, has lived on three continents, and now calls Australia home. She has worked in social justice for over 20 years and passionately relates to the Playing It Forward conference theme of un-addressed racism and oppression. Paula has trained in Playback Theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, and with Diane Hamilton in Compassionate Conversations and mediation. She continues to reflect on her own unconscious bias, and she has attended 'White Awake' groups and trainings. Paula will bring her experience of Allyship to inform and deepen our three home group sessions together.
The Most Monstrous Woman Facilitators: Cymbeline Buhler King and Lucinda Gleeson
Patriarchy uses images & narratives of female monstrousness to minimise women. Tragically, we internalise these and allow them to limit who we are and who we can be in the world.
It is shocking to acknowledge that playback theatre is not immune to the unconscious marginalisation of women. To address systemic undercurrents of this kind is tremendously difficult because they remain active through invisibility. Therefore, this home group will be open only to female-identifying participants.
This home group is a safe space to explore, articulate, give voice to and free some of the limiting ideas of monstrous femininity. It will also be an opportunity for participants to process their experiences of the gathering, using playback interspersed with Bouffon, which is a theatre form that prosecutes ableism through celebration of the grotesque within us all.
Get ugly!
Cymbeline’s biography
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.
Lucinda’s biography
Lucinda Gleeson is the Artistic Director of Playback Theatre Sydney. She has been in the company since 1998 as an actor, lighting designer, conductor and producer. She is also the director of the iconic production 'The chronic ills of Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan (a lie): a theatrical talking blues and glissendorf' (2009-11) and other works including the sold out recent Winky & Co production 'The arrogance' and KXT (2024). She is a graduate of The Ensemble Studios since 1997. She was Venue Manager and Producer at The Old Fitzroy from 2009-13, Associate Producer at NIDA from 2014-15 and currently works at Sydney Theatre Company and Belvoir St Theatre. She is a co-creator of Punk Playback which shocked and awed global Playback practitioners at the South African IPTN conference in 2023.
Cymbeline and Lucinda’s work together
Cymbeline and Lucinda have collaborated on many projects since the early 00s. Lucinda was lighting designer on the award winning production that Cymbeline conceived and directed 'Swan Laid' (2003-04), which toured to Canada and Japan. It was the first Intersubjective Fiction work, developed in collaboration with Playback Theatre Sydney performers. They have saved two playback theatre conferences from failing to provide a celebration, hosting ragingly successful post-conference parties at the 2010 Australasian playback conference in Sydney and the 2019 IPTN conference in India. Lucinda was a special guest the 2019 Theatre of Friendship national gathering in Mt Lavinia, Sri Lanka where Cymbeline did field work for her PhD.
Inclusion in Playback Facilitator: Robin Davidson
The far right is rising around the world. Racial minorities, disabled people, LGBTQIA+ people and other groups are under attack emotionally, economically and sometimes physically.
What is the role and responsibility of Playback Theatre in challenging bigotry and including diverse communities in our companies, audiences and stories?
This group will focus on discussions, exercises and improvisations about inclusion in playback companies and audiences, respecting difference and making diverse audiences and tellers feel heard and welcome.
We will reflect on who is represented in our Playback companies, who is not, and why. How can we modify training games and exercises for disable actors in our companies? What are the challenges and advantages of diversity in a company?
We will practise representing difference in playback stories. What are the different ways we can play back a story where different languages are spoken? When can we use multiple languages on stage? How do we portray people with disability on stage? What are the challenges of choosing pronouns when conducting?
We will reflect on conducting and playing back stories of traumatic experiences, and techniques to avoid re-traumatising audiences, tellers and cast members.
Robin’s biography
Robin Davidson (he/him) is a co-founder of Canberra Playback Theatre (1999-2015) and co-founder of Rebus Playback Theatre Ensemble (2022-present). The Rebus Playback Theatre Ensemble is a consciously inclusive Playback company.
Robin has taught Playback Theatre in Sri Lanka as part of the Theatre for Friendship project initiated by Cymbeline Buhler, and in Indonesia. He is also founding Artistic Director of Rebus Theatre for Social Change, an award-winning inclusive theatre company based on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country (Canberra). He has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, Theatre/Media from Charles Sturt University and has worked as a clown, stilt-walker, actor, writer, teacher and director. He is also an occasional activist, particularly around environmental issues.