Jean-Marie Oriot

Online workshop · Four sessions

With Jean-Marie Oriot

A hand parts two white curtains. Through the gap, a window shows a wet street, parked cars and a row of red-brick houses under a grey sky.
Photo · Toa Heftiba

For someone I will never meet

An online workshop in four sessions. You write an experience for a person you will never see. Somewhere else, someone you will never see writes one for you. And it begins before the first session, when an experience I wrote for you arrives.

  • In English
  • Up to 12 participants
  • From 25 January 2027
Register

The idea

An experience made for one person, at a distance.

Since the 1960s, artists linked to Fluxus have written event scores: short instructions that anyone can perform, anywhere, at any time. Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit is full of them. They are our starting point, and only a starting point. A form is just a form. What matters here is what the experience produces in the person who lives it.

In more than ten years with Teatro de los Sentidos, I learned to work towards what Enrique Vargas calls poetic transcendence: the moment an experience moves someone, opens a question in them, and sometimes changes them a little. This workshop asks how that can happen when you are not in the room, and will never meet the person you are creating for.

So the group becomes a chain. Each participant writes a score for another participant, guided only by a few anonymous clues. Someone else, whom you will not see either, writes one for you.

The journey

Five weeks, four sessions.

The workshop begins before the first session, with a first experience I write and send you a few days before, and ends after the last, with experiences still to live. In between, four live sessions online, and time away from the screen to write, test and receive.

  1. Before

    A first experience arrives, written by me

  2. Session 1

    What happened in me

  3. Session 2

    Writing for someone

  4. Session 3

    What it does to someone

  5. Session 4

    The return

  6. After

    Experiences you take home to live

Along the way, you will

  • live experiences written for you, alone, wherever you are
  • learn tools to build meaning into an experience, and the care it takes to address someone you cannot see
  • write a score for another participant and send it on its way
  • discover, in the last session, what it did to them

Afterwards

What you leave with.

  • A finished score, lived by a real stranger, and their own words about what it did to them.
  • A way of building meaning into an experience that you can carry into performance, installation, sensory theatre, teaching or any participatory work.
  • A way of listening to an audience that starts from what they lived, not from what you meant.
  • Clear ground for intimacy at a distance: consent, a way out, physical safety, and the recipient’s right not to be transformed.
  • Three experiences written for you: one by me, sent before the first session, and two by other participants, one of them someone you will never meet.

Participants

Who it is for.

Theatre makers, performers, dancers, musicians, visual artists, writers and stage technicians, and anyone who designs experiences for other people. No previous experience of scores or sensory theatre is needed.

What you do need is a few hours a week, a quiet place to work, and the readiness to be surprised by someone you will never meet.

Practical

Practical details.

Format
Online, four live sessions of 2 hours over five weeks
Between sessions
About 2 hours a week of personal work, mostly away from the screen
Group
6 to 12 participants
Language
English
Dates
Mondays 25 January, 1 February, 8 February and 22 February 2027
Time
7 pm to 9 pm Brussels time (CET)6 pm in London, 1 pm in New York
First experience
Arrives on Monday 18 January 2027, to be lived alone before the first session
Fee
€320€280 early-bird rate, until 9 December 2026€180 solidarity rate, two places, for students and artists in financial difficulty. No proof needed.
Registration
Open until 15 January 2027. The workshop takes place with a minimum of six participants.
You will need
A computer with camera and microphone, and a quiet place
Invoicing
An invoice and a certificate of attendance are available on request
Black and white portrait of Jean-Marie Oriot, short grey hair and beard, smiling slightly, a plant behind him.

Your guide

About me.

I am a French artist living in Belgium. For thirty years I have worked in scenography, immersive and sensory theatre, performance and poetic installation, including more than a decade with Teatro de los Sentidos and work with Carte Blanche in Denmark.

With Julie Seiller and Sarah John, I co-create Between Us, a series of online poetic performances. It taught me that a screen can hold real presence when the experience is built for it. I give workshops and masterclasses for artists, art schools and theatres.

More about my work

Registration

Somewhere, someone is waiting for a score only you can write.

Four Monday evenings, from 25 January 2027. Choose your rate and pay securely online. The early-bird rate ends on 9 December. Twelve people. Twelve scores. Twelve strangers.

  • Early bird

    €280

    Until 9 December 2026

    Register at €280

  • Standard

    €320

    Until 15 January 2027

    Register at €320

  • Solidarity

    €180

    Two places, for students and artists in financial difficulty. No proof needed. I trust you to choose it only if you need it, so it stays open for someone who does.

    Register at €180

Questions, or an invoice for an organisation? Write to me: jean-marie@oriot.net