Why do we still gather: Theatre on shifting ground?

Why do we gather? A question mark following one of the most fundamental preconditions of theatre-making. Theatre is a collective medium. Gathering lies at its very core. Artists need to gather. A technical team needs to gather. Financial resources need to be brought together. An audience needs to gather around the work we create and communicate. And knowledge, too, must be gathered: knowledge of the context in which theatre is made and to which it seeks to speak.

But how do we continue to find the impulse to gather around theatre at times when it sometimes appears that the only people who still have a clear answer to the question why should we gather? are theatre-makers themselves? Everyone else whose participation is necessary for theatre to thrive seems increasingly open to alternatives, asking whether what theatre offers can be found elsewhere.

The simpler question may be: Can theatre survive these conditions? The more complicated one is: Is theatre ready to reinvent itself to fit this ever-shifting ground.

What does gathering mean now? Who is invited into it, and who is pushed outside? What kinds of institutions, spaces and working structures does it require? What happens when the conditions that once made international exchange possible can no longer be taken for granted? And what might theatre still offer precisely because it asks us to do something that increasingly feels difficult: to occupy the same space, at the same time, and to pay attention together?

This discussion builds upon these questions, recognising that the answers are no longer simple or self-evident. It asks why, for whom, and under what conditions we continue to gather around theatre. And most importantly, what may be lost if, at some point, we give in and stop.