# proposed circumstances A two-month intensive course in contemporary theatre and performance through sustained group practice in Yerevan. A process-first and research-first programme in dialogue between people and space, ending in a collective public showing. **A two-month intensive course** Proposed Circumstances is an intensive programme in contemporary theatre and performance built through sustained group practice. Rehearsal, performance, acting practice, writing, lectures, screenings and dialogue become a shared process of research and co-creation. Curated by Ilya Moshchitsky and Chronotope - [Course completed](https://temporary.am/) ## Programme and side events ### Core group practice - **Date:** 15 April — 5 June - **Time:** 6 days a week, from 17:00, up to 4 hours - **Venue:** On-site, Yerevan A process-first and research-first course working in dialogue between people and space. You work intensively with the same group throughout the course: rehearsal, performance and acting practice, writing, lectures, screenings, and dialogue — treating practice as research and co-creation. The course is built as process-first and research-first work in dialogue between people and space. The arc moves toward a collective performative project shaped from the group’s material. ### Constanza Macras Workshop - **Date:** 5–6 May - **Time:** 2 days - **Venue:** Sundukyan Theatre A two-day workshop built around Constanza Macras's practice. A 2-days workshop built around the practice of Constanza Macras — one of the most radical voices in contemporary dance, whose work brings together dance, text, live music and film, and unites performers from a wide range of genres, backgrounds and countries. Developed for Proposed Circumstances, the workshop offers participants a rare opportunity to engage firsthand with an artistic method that has been breaking boundaries on the world’s most important theatre stages for over two decades. In addition to our core group, we are opening 10 extra spots for external participants! ### Marina Davydova Lecture - **Date:** 29 May - **Time:** 16:30, 2 hours - **Venue:** Stanislavsky Theatre Where does contemporary theatre begin and how do we watch it? Theatre is one of the oldest art forms in the world — and one of the most restless. In just over a century since the director’s role first emerged, it has undergone extraordinary transformations, claimed new territories, and reinvented itself in ways no one could have predicted. Where is all of this taking us? What do we make of contemporary productions, and is there any meaningful way to evaluate them? How and why did stage direction even come into being, when theatre had managed without it for millennia? And could the art form itself one day yield to the seductive alternative worlds offered by technology? The evening will include carefully chosen excerpts from productions that Marina believes have defined the grammar of 21st-century theatre; an exploration of visionaries from Tadeusz Kantor to Katie Mitchell, from Robert Wilson to Romeo Castellucci; and an open conversation after the lecture. ### Craig McCorquodale Workshop - **Date:** 30 May - **Time:** 15:00, 2–3 hours - **Venue:** Stanislavsky Theatre Civic Actions: a laboratory for performance in public space. What happens when the private becomes visible in shared space? When a confession is placed on a wall, a gesture offered to a stranger, or an invitation left for no one in particular? Civic Actions is a 2–3 hour workshop that treats the social fabric of the city as its material. Drawing on the tradition of conceptual art — from Sophie Calle’s explorations of public intimacy to durational performance in urban space — participants are invited to compose small-scale actions that operate quietly or provocatively within the public realm. Inspired by the project 24 Things to Tell You, in which 24 texts and actions are placed into public space over the course of 24 hours, the workshop asks: how can performance enter civic space without announcing itself? How do we address one another across the threshold of the personal and the collective? ### Hadas Neuman Lecture-workshop - **Date:** 1 June - **Time:** 16:00, 2 hours - **Venue:** Stanislavsky Theatre From Street to Stage: Documentary as a Living Practice. How does documentary filmmaking become a living performance? Where does the screen end and the stage begin? And what happens when the camera stops being a barrier between the artist and reality? In this lecture, Israeli filmmaker, theatre-maker, and video artist Hadas Neuman opens the creative laboratory behind her performance 100 Men (which will be presented during Chronofest) — a poetic journey in search of a father she never knew, through encounters with 99 strangers. For two years, Hadas wandered through the neighborhoods of Givatayim, filming men her father’s age — a widowed florist, a retired womanizer, a street cleaner, an aging DJ, a man who lost his memory — and asking herself: who could my father have been? From this archive of the personal and the collective, a performance was born: a treadmill under a spotlight, flickering video portraits, a live voice in direct dialogue with the absent. Together, they form a layered meditation on masculinity, loneliness, regret, and the search for identity. ### Matija Ferlin Artist Talk - **Date:** 2 June - **Time:** 16:00, 2 hours - **Venue:** Stanislavsky Theatre On Making an Artist. What holds together a practice that moves between directing ensemble dance, making theatre with actors, and standing alone on stage in a one-man show? And what does it mean to bring all of that back to the city where you were born? In this artist talk, Croatian theatre director, choreographer, and performer Matija Ferlin reflects on a practice built across multiple cities, forms, and modes of collaboration — and on the ongoing project of rethinking what performance can be. ### Matija Ferlin Workshop - **Date:** 3 June - **Time:** 14:00, 4 hours - **Venue:** Stanislavsky Theatre Movement and Wakefulness. Through this workshop, Ferlin primarily wants to research the notions of working on the performer’s body by offering participants a reversal of established ideas about performer’s presence, stage movement and those that prevail within the so-called classical theatrical or dance process. He will offer ways and methods that will help the participant to work on the state of complete performative wakefulness and to be able to listen to the overgrowth of the silence that’s springing out of a still/moving body once it has been placed in a performative context. ### Final project - **Date:** 5 June - **Venue:** Stanislavsky Theatre Premiere of Proposed Circumstances. ## What you will gain Participants will develop the capacity to: - **Work in an ensemble** — Sustain shared responsibility, co-research and collective authorship. - **Work with presence and space** — Use corporeality, attention and environments as compositional and dramaturgical tools. - **Develop performative ideas** — Move from impulse towards structured propositions through practice, dramaturgy and performative writing. - **Enter a wider ecosystem** — Build a professional network and possible future trajectories with Chronotope Theatre Company. ## Experts ### Ilya Moshchitsky — Workshop curator, studio lead ### Anahit Ghazaryan — Writer, visual artist ### Constanza Macras — Workshop curator, choreographer ### Ekaterina Kramarenko — Viewpoints, performance, site-specific ### Matija Ferlin — Choreographer, theatre director ### Hadas Neuman — Filmmaker, theatre-maker ### Vlada Kuprina — Theatre and performance history ### Alexey Kiselev — Contemporary theatre, new stage forms ### Anahit Musheghyan — Yoga instructor, co-founder of B'Arev Festival ### Alexander Plotnikov — Dramaturgy, performance writing ### Artem Arsenian — Assistant to the workshop, curator and international producer ### Boris Nikitin — Online guest speaker ### Dmitry Volkostrelov — Online guest speaker ### Artyom Tomilov — Online guest speaker ## Format and conditions - **Dates:** 15 April — 5 June 2026 - **Place:** On-site, Yerevan - **Deadline:** 10 April 2026 - **Rhythm:** 6 days per week, sessions from 17:00, up to 4 hours per day; Saturday off - **Languages:** English, Armenian and Russian; simultaneous interpretation may be provided - **Age:** Up to 38 years old; primarily based in Armenia ## Answers ### Who is the programme for? Theatre and performing arts practitioners, interdisciplinary artists, writers, curators and researchers, and newcomers from any other field who feel the need to encounter art from the inside. What matters is a readiness to experiment, to share experience and to work collectively over a long stretch of time. ### What is the rhythm? On site in Yerevan from 15 April to 5 June 2026, six days a week. Sessions begin at 17:00 and run up to four hours. Saturday is the day off. ### What languages are used? English, Armenian and Russian. Depending on the language mix of the group, simultaneous interpretation may be provided for lectures and workshops. ### Is previous theatre experience required? No. The programme welcomes practitioners and people from other fields alike. Recommended age is up to 38, and participants are primarily based in Armenia. ### When is this programme not a good fit? If you are looking for fixed answers, ready-made methods and stable hierarchies, if you prefer predictable outcomes to experiment, or if you cannot commit to an intensive on-site rhythm. ### How do you work with ethics and safety? We work with the body, attention and presence while respecting personal boundaries, and any participant may opt out of an exercise. The course may touch on personal and emotionally charged material; we approach it with care and do not encourage violence towards oneself or others. **Ethics and safety** We work with the body, attention and presence while respecting personal boundaries. Any participant may opt out of an exercise. The course may touch on personal and emotionally charged topics, which we approach with care. We do not encourage violence towards oneself or others.