AusAct 2027
Australasian Actor Training Conference
Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne
12–14 February 2027
Locating Actor Training: Place, Country, and Practice
“Locating” has multiple meanings, such as identifying where training happens, situating practice culturally and historically, and questioning where Australian actor training currently is positioned overall.
The Victorian College of the Arts sits at an intersection of Country, on lands connected with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples, lands that have long been places of gathering, exchange, storytelling and embodied knowledge.
Where does actor training take place? Actor training never occurs nowhere. It happens on Country, within institutions, studios, rehearsal rooms, communities, private schools, regional centres, digital environments and increasingly across hybrid spaces. It also takes place within perhaps its most immediate location, the body of the performer. Yet many of the practices that continue to shape contemporary Australian actor training emerged elsewhere. Stanislavski, Meisner, Lecoq, Laban, Linklater, Fitzmaurice, Viewpoints and numerous other influential practices carry with them particular histories, philosophies, cultures and understandings of the actor. What happens when these practices are relocated?
What does it mean to teach European and Euro-American legacy pedagogies on colonised land? How are they changed by Australian geography, culture, histories, communities and bodies? And at what point does adaptation become the creation of something new?
AusAct 2027 invites actor trainers, performers, directors, researchers, students and institutions to consider place as an active force within training itself. We ask what it might mean to locate, and perhaps relocate, actor training within the cultural, geographical and embodied realities of contemporary Australia.