Is intercultural actor training utopic? This lecture argues that a geographical – indeed archipelagic – analysis of such training nuances recent euphoric impulses to deem it a ‘utopian’ model of performance practice, even as it materially reveals glimpses of this utopia. Drawing from fieldwork data over the period of 2021-2022 conducted at ITI, I attend to the ways spatial and temporal imaginaries are mapped out in the context of intercultural performance training in Singapore, taking a geocultural and geopolitical lens. How do embodied processes of technical performance training interplay with geopolitical concerns surrounding issues of nationalism, historical and contemporary tensions, and migration?

In parallel, I will present digital mappings drawing from data across ITI’s history, raising new questions about the mobilities and constraints of intercultural actor training – where is this mobility concentrated and where are the noticeable gaps, and why? These questions reveal unequal spaces that become the foundation for utopian intercultural encounters. Ultimately, I show how the practices of cartography at ITI – literal, embodied, and figurative – reveals the work of an actor training that is deeply aware of what it means to live in and belong to a world.