Between Desire, Role and System

All of us move through several layers at the same time:
personal desires, professional roles, and systems that place expectations on us.

Tension often arises exactly where these layers no longer fit together.
Where an inner impulse has no place.
Where a role protects and limits at the same time.
Where a system functions — but feels empty from the inside.

This workshop creates a space in which these tensions can become visible, movable, and negotiable — not by talking about them, but through shared action in the room.

This workshop is for people who work with people, roles, and systems, for example:

• Coaches, consultants, trainers
• People in leadership or supportive roles
• Those working with groups, organizations, or change processes

The requirement is less about experience and more about attitude:
a willingness to become part of the process — not only a guide or an observer.

This workshop is intentionally designed for coaches, consultants, and people in supportive roles.

Not to teach a method or provide a toolkit, but to open a direct, experiential access to Theatre for Living — personally facilitated by David Diamond.

The work makes it possible to understand key formats and attitudes in Theatre for Living not only intellectually, but to experience them embodied.

Many participants take impulses from this experience that later continue to work in their own practice with clients, teams, or organizations — not as technique, but as a changed perception of dynamics, roles, and room to act.

This workshop is not a training and not a certification format, but an intensive entry point for coaches who want to deepen their practice by becoming part of the process themselves.

The public evenings are part of this frame: they open the working process to a wider field and allow Theatre for Living to be experienced in an expanded context — accompanied by exchange and reflection in an informal setting.

This workshop is not suitable for people who:

• mainly want to watch
• are looking for quick solutions or clear answers
• collect methods without bringing themselves into the work
• do not want to be seen in a protected space

The work depends on presence, participation, and responsibility for one’s own actions.

The work in this workshop is based on Theatre for Living, an approach rooted in Theatre of the Oppressed and further developed for complex personal, social, and organizational questions.

A central element is the format Rainbow of Desires.
It makes inner contradictions, blocking dynamics, and competing desires visible by having participants embody them and bring them into relationship with one another.

Unlike analytical or purely dialogue-based formats, this work does not talk about inner conflicts — it works with them: in the room, with body, voice, and action.

The format Corporations in the Head is also included, especially in the public evening events.
Here, internalized authorities, role images, and systemic voices become tangible — the voices that shape our thinking and actions.

We work:

• physically and spatially
• dialogically — not confrontationally
• process-oriented rather than solution-fixated

No prior experience is necessary.
What matters is a willingness to engage and to take responsibility for one’s own process.

The workshop is intentionally designed for a limited group size.

This creates enough diversity for systemic work, while still leaving room for depth and presence.
The work happens in the same room in parallel processes — observing and acting alternate organically.

The limited number of participants is part of the method, not a marketing device.

This workshop is intentionally designed to be compact and intensive, offering coaches and people in supportive roles a direct, experiential access to Theatre for Living — personally facilitated by David Diamond.

The focus is not on method transfer or application techniques, but on your own lived experience of dynamics, roles, and fields of tension — the same kinds of realities that show up in work with clients, teams, and organizations.

The workshop is designed as a connected process over three days.
Each day has its own function within the overall work.

The first day is for arriving, getting to know the way of working, and opening the shared space.

• Check-in (from 10:00)
• Introduction (11:00)
• Entering Theatre for Living work
• First shared processes in the room

In the evening, the working process is opened to an external audience.

Public event: Corporations in the Head
A public experiential space in which inner roles, internalized authorities, and conflicting impulses are made visible.

The second day is the core of the workshop.
The work deepens, dynamics become clearer, tensions more concrete.

• Deepening Theatre for Living work
• Work in parallel groups
• Alternating between acting and observing

In the evening, the working process is opened to an external audience.

Public event: Rainbow of Desires
A format that makes inner conflict, ambivalent desires, and blocking dynamics tangible — not through analysis, but through embodiment and relationship in the room.

The third day is for integration.

• Bringing experiences together
• Reflection and consolidation
• Closing within the protected frame of the workshop group
• Ends around 13:00

The two public evenings are not an add-on and not a performance.
They are independent experiential spaces that relate to the workshop without replacing it.

Participation in the public evenings is voluntary.
Workshop participants are invited, but not obliged, to attend.

This evening is dedicated to inner structures:
internalized roles, authorities, expectations, and inner organizations.

In the room, you may encounter:

• inner voices
• conflicting demands
• structural tensions

The evening is open both to workshop participants and to a public audience.
It is for people who want to get a first sense of this way of working.

The second public evening focuses on inner conflict and ambivalent desires.

At the center are:

• inner fields of tension
• competing impulses
• blocking dynamics

This is not a demonstration, but an open experiential space in which people actively take part.

The workshop itself remains a protected space.
Personal processes are not displayed or performed.

The public evenings offer resonance — not the disclosure of individual workshop work.

The workshop takes place as an in-person format.
The work depends on physical presence, attention, and relationship in the room.

• No streaming
• No parallel online participation

The working language of the workshop is accessible English.
Depending on the audience, the public evenings may take place partly in German or be interpreted.

Participation requires:

• a willingness to take part actively
• a mindful approach to yourself and others
• personal responsibility for your own boundaries

This workshop is not a therapeutic setting, but an experiential learning and working environment.

The workshop takes place in Salzburg.

The exact venue will be announced in good time before the start.

The workshop runs over three days:

• Day 1: Arrival, entry, and public evening
• Day 2: Deepening and public evening
• Day 3: Integration and closing (morning)

Detailed timings will be provided after registration.

• Shared breaks are part of the frame
• Lunch breaks are scheduled; food is organized individually or collectively by agreement
• For the networking evenings, finger food is planned

Travel and accommodation are to be arranged by participants.
Recommendations for nearby places to stay will be provided.

Participation in the workshop is limited and takes place by request.

This is not selection in the sense of evaluation, but about fit:
between group, way of working, and personal motivation.

After your request, you will receive further information about the process, the conditions, and registration.

The workshop will take place with a minimum of 10 participants.

The group size is intentionally limited.
Once the maximum number of participants is reached, no further registrations are possible.

An early request helps with planning, but does not yet commit you to participation.

After personal confirmation of a place, participation becomes binding.
In case of cancellation at a later point, cancellation fees may apply, as the workshop works with a small group and places cannot usually be replaced on short notice.

By registering, you agree to:

• be present for the full duration of the workshop
• take part actively in the process
• respect the protected frame

The participation fee for the three-day workshop is:

• € 2,490
• Early Bird: € 1,970 (for the first 6 participants)

The fee includes:

• participation in the three-day Theatre for Living workshop
• access to both public evenings
• networking & exchange as part of the evenings
• catering / finger food during the networking phases
• one additional ticket for a guest for the public evenings

The number of participants is intentionally limited.
Participation is by request.

The public evenings can also be attended independently of the workshop.

• € 197 per evening
• € 350 for both evenings

The fee includes:

• attendance at the respective public evening
• networking & exchange
• catering / finger food

Participation in the workshop and the public evenings is limited.
After your request, you will receive further information about availability and the registration process.

The workshop is facilitated by David Diamond, co-founder of Theatre for Living.

For more than three decades, David Diamond has worked with communities, organizations, and groups in highly polarized contexts.
At the center of his work is what he calls “the work of understanding”:
keeping people in conversation even where division, fear, or ideological rigidity are already at work.

Theatre for Living emerged from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and was developed by David Diamond over many years as a practical approach — not to enforce positions, but to expand people’s room to act.

Across hundreds of projects worldwide — including with Indigenous communities, consultants, educational institutions, and public bodies — this work has proven itself as bridge-building:
between “us” and “them”, between inner experience and outer reality, between conflict and dialogue.

David Diamond does not understand his role as that of a teacher or therapist, but as someone who holds spaces in which understanding becomes possible — voluntary, embodied, and responsible.

This workshop offers coaches and people in supportive roles a direct encounter with this attitude and way of working.

Hosted by Purpoze, an initiative for conscious work with personal, organizational, and societal questions.

This workshop is an invitation to pause and look more closely:
at what is at work, pulling, blocking, or held in tension.

Not to fix something.
But to regain mobility — in your own actions and in the shared space.

If this way of working speaks to you, and you can imagine being part of an intensive process for three days, we look forward to your request.

Participation in the workshop is limited and takes place by request.

This is not selection in the sense of evaluation, but about fit:
between group, way of working, and personal motivation.

After your request, you will receive further information about the process, the conditions, and registration.

The workshop will take place with a minimum of 10 participants.