Applied Theatre Research - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2014

This article explores the possibilities and limitations of applied theatre in relation to personal, social and political change today. It is concerned with making connections between its practices and the current austerity agendas of Western democracies, particularly with regard to the ways in which these agendas are shaping educational curricula and pushing educational drama to the margins. We propose that there is an urgent need to reinstate applied drama/theatre processes at the core of any curriculum concerned with the development of active citizens. The article analyses issues linked to facilitation and the strategies needed to move beyond therapeutic objectives into the arenas of social and political change. To this end, we consider how the application of facilitation as fooling may enable applied theatre to engage with the discourses of power.

The applied theatre researcher faces an abundance of research methodologies. In terms of research training, an inventory of approaches is called for, one that follows the nature and needs of the practice. This article outlines one basic epistemological approach in the field of artistic research and practice-led research, as well as in drama education. Following the influences of avant-garde practice and thinking, an extended epistemology is identified, which builds on the relation or reconnection of sensuous experience and propositional knowing that historically have been marginalized by the dominance of a perceived split: just propositional thinking or just aesthetic experience. Nevertheless, this extended – or what researchers term ‘ecological’ – epistemology is embedded in or protected by many theatre practices. It needs to be recognized as a significant epistemology, serving as base also for research and methodology, and is rooted in the arts movement itself.

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.

This article is a critical reflection on the 2012 Rouge Park Project, an applied theatre project in Toronto that looked at the relationship between urban life and the natural world. The impetus for the project was the transitioning of a large Toronto civic park into a national park, making it the first of Canada’s many national parks to be located inside a major city. Using Doreen Massey’s notion of a ‘place beyond place’ as a provocation, the facilitators of the project consider whether the theatrical process enabled among the participants and audience any sense of ethical engagement with the issues at stake in the park’s nationalization. While modest about the outcomes, the facilitators find worth in the direct contact the project’s participants had with members of the community throughout the process.

Teenagers frequently view history as a boring subject, with little relevance to their personal lives. This study integrated historical content and process drama activities to engage teenagers in the topic of World War I. Participants had registered in an after-school drama program offered by an Ontario theatre company. The study aimed to discover whether or not process drama enhanced affective engagement in an historical event and, if so, what specific aspects of drama promoted this engagement. Participant journals and audio-taped interviews, program facilitator observations and researcher field notes provided core data for the investigation. Results indicated that participants did experience affective engagement during the eight process drama sessions. Data analysis uncovered themes related to three major topics: content, response, and creation and expression of ideas. The research yielded seven features of process drama that encouraged affective engagement.

Performance ethnography is a well-established area within ethnography, focusing as it does on a live performance of some kind. Within the hybrid field of performance studies, the notions of misperformance and the poetics of failure focus on the intrinsic qualities of ephemerality and contingency present in performance. More specifically, these concepts highlight how (un)planned mistakes, errors – even disasters – may befall those who perform, including the ever-pressing potential aesthetic disaster of a failed performance. How do these aspects of performance affect both performer and spectator, whether intended or not? And how might these concepts be of value and interest to a performance ethnographer/applied theatre researcher? This article presents an interdisciplinary investigation examining theories and practices of misperformance and failure in relation to how performance has been (successfully and perhaps less so) taken up as a form of ethnography.

Refugee Performance: Practical Encounters, edited by Michael Balfour (2013) Bristol: Intellect, ISBN 9781 8415 0637 1, h/bk, 316 pp., £45.00

Applied Theatre in Action: A Journey, Jennifer S. Hartley (2012) Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 192 pp., ISBN 9 7818 5856 4968, p/bk, US$37.50