At the ANTI Festival in Kuopio Finland at the moment. The highlights so far for me have been Stephen Hodge's Artists Statement at the Seminar yesterday morning, introducing the work of Wrights and Sites; and taking part in Tim Knowles' extraordinary inventive piece Live Windwalks. For this last work, a group of us set off from the centre of the Market Square, guided by wind veins ingeniously fixed with helmets on our heads. We were then pushed and blown around the city like urban flotsam and jetsam - finding ourselves in strange eddies and cross-currents - endlessly circling and bumping in to each other, sometimes holding up the traffic at cross roads, as we followed our contrary wind-directed patterns. Thinking in terms of the Practitioner Study, the subject of this journal, this is one of the ways the contemporary practitoners practices - taking part in Festivals of this kind - enlivening a city (out-of-season), and providing an unusual probing kind of entertainment.

Email correspondence with Ross Brown today, regarding my opening up some Friday evenings for performances. Very pleased to say he's responded immediately with an expression of interest:

Regarding the Friday evening (16th), I would quite like to project my DVD artefact 16 Essays on Composing for Theatre with a live, improvised performative accompaniment. It's something I've wanted to do for a while now -- take the documentary artefact of a process forward into a new phase where it becomes the text for a new live event. This would require a DVD projection onto a screen and a table with a standard lamp. For the sound part I would just need the equipment i have already booked, but with the addition of a powerful data projector. Might this be possible? Its about 40 minutes long.

He's also keen to take use every afternoon Monday - Friday for his research workshop with the students.

I'm actually going to have them do a mini production of an excerpt from Maeterlinck's The Intruder (which is a wonderfully sonorous text.) So I'll take every afternoon if that's ok -- including Friday.

At least the first week of the Unit seems to be shaping up!

The core of the new Practioner Study Unit involves inviting practioners and theatre-making companies to undertake R & D at Central, drawing MAATP students in the work where practicable, but also seeing this as an opportunity to carry out research work which they feel will in any case be useful to them. In the first week, for example, the Sound Designer Ross Brown will be considering 'How Audiences Hear in the Theatre'. We've also had the idea of offering a number of evening slots to practitioners who would like to show some work to an invited audience. I'm not sure if this idea will take off or not. If you have a suitable piece of work you would like to show - do please get in touch.

This blog will set out to be a professional journal or account of my work as Course Leader of the MA Advanced Theatre Practice at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Its main purpose will be to reflect on the learning of students on this new version of a well-established course. I have applied to the Centre for Excellence in Theatre Training at the Central School of Speech and Drama for support with a new Unit in the first term - the Practioner Study - and this journal is particularly designed to reflect on the effectiveness of this Unit, which will be starting on October 12th. Up until that point I will be considering our thoughts and preparations for the work ahead. This is quite a dry start to a blog. I imagine as it gets going it will find its own voice and approach. And the contact with practioners and students will liven it up a bit. But it is designed to serve a serious documenting purpose.