Institute of Performative Inquiry

Open Rehearsals are warm, playful, and highly interactive learning laboratories hosted by the Institute of Performative Inquiry, Brussels.

Each Open Rehearsal explores a specific topic through performative arts, embodied practice, and shared experimentation. No prior experience is required, curiosity and a willingness to explore are enough.

This time: Physical status.

Every day, we try to influence colleagues, teams, students, stakeholders, and organisations. Yet influence is shaped by more than what we know or what we say. Long before we speak, people are already responding to us.

In theatre, this is called "status": the subtle and constantly shifting dynamics through which people establish, negotiate, challenge, and share influence. Status is not about hierarchy or formal position. It is a living interactional process that unfolds in every meeting, classroom, workshop, and conversation.

Through playful exercises and performative experimentation, participants will explore how presence, voice, movement, and the use of space shape confidence, authority, connection, and impact. We will investigate how status is communicated through the body and how small shifts in behaviour can profoundly affect the way others respond to us.

This Open Rehearsal offers a first taste of the themes explored in our full-day workshop "Status: The Silent Choreography of Influence" on November 26 in Brussels. Participants who wish to join remain eligible for the Early Bird fee. Visit www.performativeinquiry.com/event-list for more.

Facilitators Charlotte De Metsenaere is a Communication Science and Group Dynamics expert and one of Europe’s leading theatrical improvisers and public speaking coaches.

Ralf Wetzel is an acknowledged leadership development expert and theatre performer. Since more than 17 years he supports leaders to courageously step into the unknown.