Summer's here and the living is easy. Time to rest-up before honing your creative skills at some of the many great training opportunities coming-up in the autumn. At the end of August, Total Theatre hosts the fourth Discovery exchange event, this year taking place at mac, Birmingham. It's an invaluable opportunity for practitioners to meet and exchange working processes in a supportive and relaxed environment. See page 19 for details.

In September, the International Workshop Festival (IWF) takes place in London, Coventry and Belfast. This year, for the first time, Total Theatre will host a series of debates as part of the festival. The IWF draws together some of the world's leading theatre practitioners to explore different approaches to physical performance. See page 33 for details.

Also in September, the Art and Design Department of Central School of Speech and Drama, in collaboration with Total Theatre, hosts a three-day Dramaturgy Symposium. This promises to be a mix of practical workshops and discussion sessions, and is aimed at exploring the role of the dramaturg. Total Theatre members benefit from greatly reduced rates. Details about how to register are on page 19.

In this issue, Dymphna Callery of John Moore's University, Liverpool, considers the vital part that ongoing training has to play in practitioner development. Everyone needs to take a break from the rehearsal room once in a while. What better way to recharge your batteries?

Also in this issue, there's an interview with Ken Campbell, whose twenty-two hour performance The Warp was the centrepiece of Hoxton Hall's recent experimental theatre season. Continuing the theme of artistic experimentation, David Harradine reports on two new national initiatives aimed at supporting the work of Live Artists.

Elsewhere in this issue, Anne-Louise Rentell reports from the 1999 Refract International Circus Conference, Alex Mermikides considers the role of the writer in devised theatre, and Ray Newe investigates Stan's Cafe's fascinating restaging of The Carrier Frequency, first produced by Impact Theatre in the early 1980s. In the absence of a written script, and with only a poor quality video as evidence of the original production, Stan's Cafe recreated a show that's been cited, by many, as responsible for kick-starting the contemporary physical theatre scene in the UK.