Imagine a conference to which nobody flies. A performance at which the invited leading scientists do not appear physically, but are each represented by one local person. At the beginning of the performance, the local performers step into a classical conference setting on a theatre stage, open their script and the show begins.

The Conference of Absentees workshop is part of a project by Rimini Protokoll, who are currently researching into cooperation in times of global crisis. Telepresence can lead to a kind of political and social process in which the rules of representation are changed. But here everything takes place locally and offline, with the help of the theatre: it is the invention of teleperformance. Instead of the aesthetics of PowerPoint presentations, teleperformance uses the sensory and tactile medium of theatre. A workshop about co-authorship and ghost-writing, but also about the game of instruction and representation.