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Coventry University project named Study Abroad and Exchange Experience of the Year
Tom Gorman with the PIEoneer Award
Monday 22 September 2025
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Coventry University and L'Escola Superior d'Art Dramàtic de les Illes Balears’ (ESADIB) Telepresence in Theatre project has been awarded a prestigious PIEoneer Award in recognition of a special bilingual venture exploring Shakespeare’s plays.
This month global education platform The PIE named the project, which culminated in a unique performance of Romeo and Juliet by students at Coventry University and ESADIB in Palma, as Study Abroad and Exchange Experience of the Year.
The Telepresence project enables drama students to interact directly with performers at other universities around the world through the clever repurposing of video conferencing software as though they were sharing the same rehearsal space.
At the end of online rehearsals students meet up for a week of intensive rehearsals before a live in-person show, in this instance a unique performance in English and Catalan in Palma de Mallorca, challenging both sets of students to perform in their non-native language.
International experiences for students can be incredibly expensive and you need to rehearse for three or four weeks before you can perform a play, so it really is just too costly to do something for that length of time abroad.
Telepresence allows us to do a lot of that preliminary work online, you can do everything really bar touch and this first remote stage also allowed us that time to work on our Catalan and English pronunciation. This project was deliberately tough for our actors, it was stressful, but in a good way. They are long, intense days and our performers get to know each other really well - by the time they meet each other in person, they’re already friends. Using telepresence as our rehearsal lab meant we arrived in Palma as collaborators rather than outsiders.
One of the students told me, I’ve performed Shakespeare in two languages, in just three weeks, I feel I can do anything.
I’m stunned that this small, weird but unique project has won this award, these are the Oscars in education, so I’m absolutely thrilled. Telepresence has been running for almost ten years now and I’ve seen how it changes lives.
Tom Gorman, Assistant Professor at Coventry University’s College of the Arts and Society and joint co-ordinator of the project
The performance, which took place in 2024, was so successful that both universities have continued to work together, leading to a new performance this year of As You Like It, continuing their bilingual and cross-cultural exchange.
To find out more about the Telepresence Project.
