(Left) Caption: In conversation across continents: Prof. Isabelle Gatt (UM) and Prof. Robyn Ewing (University of Sydney) during their joint panel on drama, pedagogy, and cultural connection at IDIERI 2025.
(Right) Caption: Prof. Isabelle Gatt delivering her presentation at IDIERI 2025, alongside the slide bearing the words: “In this place of new roots... we must gather, we must...” an evocative refrain that echoed the presentation’s themes of place, memory, and shared creative possibility.
Prof. Gatt’s paper, titled “Rooted Narratives, Rhizomatic Routes: Theatre-Making with Diverse Communities,” considered how stories emerge through collaborative acts of remembering, imagining, and performing. Grounded in years of practice within educational and community-based settings, her presentation reflected on the potential of theatre to hold lived experience, invite co-authorship, and generate spaces of reflection, gathering, and transformation.
The presentation invited participants to reflect on how theatre, when rooted in specific places and lived relationships, can open pathways for gathering, dialogue, and shared meaning-making. It evoked a sense of movement, of stories taking root while also branching outward, speaking to the potential of performance to connect personal experience with broader cultural and global currents.
Prof. Gatt’s work contributes meaningfully to international conversations on belonging, hybridity, and the relational nature of theatre. Her research speaks to those committed to inclusive, practice-based approaches to education and the arts, and to theatre as a way of engaging ethically and imaginatively with the world.
The UM, is proud to have been represented at this global forum for dialogue and critical inquiry and remains committed to advancing research that connects education, creativity, and community.
