Moderator Anneli Saro
In conversation Avery Gerhardt (USA), Charis Taplin (Great Britain), Elar Vahter (Estonia),
Leah Gayer (Germany/Great Britain), Maarja Tosin (Estonia), Zhenyan Ding (China)

Join the creative teams behind three newly devised performances for an open artist talk that dives into the questions, frictions, and breakthroughs of making work inside a highly multicultural ensemble. Working across different languages, cultural references, rehearsal habits, and artistic values, the teams will reflect on how they built shared ground, developing a common vocabulary, negotiating process, and shaping distinct performance worlds that can speak across multiple perspectives.

This conversation offers a behind-the-scenes look at how devised performance is actually made: from early research, provocations, and studio experiments to the moment-to-moment decisions that form structure, rhythm, and meaning. The artists will share how material emerged, how it was tested and edited, and how dramaturgy was generated collectively, through debate, intuition, listening, and practical constraint. Expect honest reflections on ensemble dynamics, decision-making under pressure, and the shifting role of authorship when no single voice holds the whole.

At the centre is the theme of “political movement”, not only as subject matter, but as a working condition: a field of tensions, urgencies, and ethical questions that shape both the content and the way collaboration unfolds. What does it mean to create together across difference? How do you hold disagreement without losing momentum? How do you choose, commit, and compose when the room contains many truths at once?

This artist talk series is part of CPPM TRIPTYCH: POLITICAL MOVEMENT, which premieres three devised performances created by students of the MA in Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM) at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn: Ana Trif (Romania), Anette Pärn (Estonia), Avery Gerhardt (USA), Charis Taplin (UK), Clarisse Degeneffe (Belgium), Daniel Ortiz Amézquita (Colombia), Dita Lūriņa (Latvia), Edward Skaines (Australia), Elar Vahter (Estonia), Jeson Joy (India), Juuli Hyttinen (Finland), Leah Gayer (Germany/UK), Maarja Tosin (Estonia), Maria Papachristodoulou (Greece), Oskar Moore (Latvia), and Zhenyan Ding (China) in collaboration with the students of the MA in Cultural Management.

CPPM TRIPTYCH is supported by Estonian Culture Endowment.