Online Performance: Reimagine the Future of Touring in Practice
Set in 2040, when national borders have dissolved and cultural infrastructures tremble, participants join a team of ‘adapters’ travelling the planet to document new artistic adaptation strategies. The performance opens with a not-so-hypothetical collapse: the first night of a festival, the power grid fails. What do you do?
Are you a performing arts professional? Join this online participatory performance to rethink the future of touring in a radically changing world.
The performance is a spin-off of Manual of Adaptation to the Planet, a participatory performance in public space created by LUIT / Zelda Soussan, Ruggero Franceschini. The work toured three countries in summer of 2025 with support of Perform Europe.
What to expect?
Together, we examine how festivals, companies, and venues could adapt to unpredictable weather, energy shortages, social shifts, and new territorial forms of governance. Participants work in small groups, reimagining and prototyping low-tech, off-grid, community-rooted versions of touring. Throughout the performance, a live illustrator visualizes every idea in real-time, transforming strategies into a collective manual of future performance practices.
Format
The format combines role-play, scenario building, field-inspired exercises, and a final assembly where all adaptations are shared. It is playful, speculative, and deeply grounded in real questions faced by contemporary touring, collected both by artist Zelda Soussan and Ruggero Franceschini, and the Perform Europe team.
Who is it for?
Programmers, artists, producers, curators, sustainability officers, and anyone rethinking mobility in the performing arts. Join us to imagine how festivals will continue to exist when energy is scarce, weather is unpredictable, and the notion of ‘international touring’ needs to be reinvented.
Attendance
Because your participation shapes the session, places are limited. Please register only if you truly plan to attend.
17 February 2026 | 
10:00-11:30 CET | 📍ZOOM (online)
*Cover photo credits: Paula-Fuentes, Project ‘Dance ALL IN’