Reflections on writing a cross-cultural theatre text

Some time ago I was invited, as a writer, to participate in a workshop designed to introduce western-trained actors to the training methods and performance styles of Peking Opera. The workshop, entitled Formwork by its director, Sally Sussman, was funded by the Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council and the Australia-China Council. The text was to arise from my experience of the workshop process. I was given great freedom within these bounds. In retrospect, neither the workshop nor the text are the elements of the experience I most value now. The workshop has long since concluded and my contract has long been fulfilled, but Formwork remains in my consciousness as a significant learning experience. In the language of biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1987), autopoietically, through the experience of Formwork, I have found congruence in new relationships. I have come to participate differently in a world that has changed.