Inviting entanglements: Researching within applied theatre companies

This article focuses on methodological and ethical challenges encountered when planning and carrying out nine months of fieldwork with three applied theatre companies in Aotearoa New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. This research was designed to address concerns about the ways in which funding relationships affect applied theatre. By working with the three companies, my aim was to develop a complex understanding of how they experience and manage their funding relationships. Designing and carrying out this research raised many questions for me about how to ‘be’ as a researcher working within organizations that are in the business of applying theatre. Drawing on ideas from ethnography, applied theatre research and organizational research, I address these questions and outline two ‘ways of being’: being reciprocal and being performative. Using the metaphor of entanglement, I discuss my struggles to enact these ‘ways of being’ through my researcher position and research relationships.