Research-based Theatre: An Artistic Methodology

First published in the UK in 2016 by

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2016 by

Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright © 2016 George Belliveau and Graham W. Lea

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

Rights to produce, film, or record any of the scripted excerpts included in this book in whole or in part, in any medium, by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by the authors. For production rights, please consult the individual authors.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copy-editor: MPS Technologies

Cover designer: Holly Rose

Production manager: Richard Kerr

Typesetting: Contentra Technologies

Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-676-6

ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-677-3

ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-678-0

Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Foreword

John O’Toole and Judith Ackroyd

Introduction

Graham W. Lea and George Belliveau

Section I: Education

Chapter 1: Scripting a Narrative Inheritance: Homa Bay Memories

Graham W. Lea

Chapter 2: The Ink Murderers Can’t Hold It Any Longer

Betsy Ferrer Okello

Chapter 3: The Lives of Incarcerated Youth in Athabasca’s Going Unmanned

Diane Conrad

Chapter 4: Critical Plays: An Exploration in Truth and Verisimilitude

Christine Sinclair and Anne Harris

Section II: Health

Chapter 5: Considering Aesthetics: Bringing New Awareness to Patient Safety Culture in Hospitals

Julia Gray and Gail Mitchell

Chapter 6: Communicating about Dementia Care through Theatre: Inside Out of Mind

Tanya Myers and Justine Schneider

Chapter 7: Transitioning Home: Research-Based Theatre with Returning Servicemen and Their Families

Linda Hassall and Michael Balfour

Chapter 8: No Particular Place to Go

Trudy Pauluth-Penner, Warwick Dobson, Monica Prendergast, and Holly Tuokko

Section III: Community

Chapter 9: An Ethnographic Performance for Professional Learning

Jane Bird

Chapter 10: Temporarily Yours: Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore

Prue Wales

Chapter 11: Harriet’s House and Ana’s Shadow: Learning about Other People’s Families

Tara Goldstein

Chapter 12: Performing Autobiography

George Belliveau and Rita L. Irwin

Final Reflections

George Belliveau and Graham W. Lea

Contributors

References

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the authors in this edition who represent some of the current leading international voices in research-based theatre. We are grateful for their willingness to share their work and wisdom. We would also like to acknowledge everyone working in the field who have inspired and informed our work, in particular Johnny Saldaña and Joe Norris. Thank you to Jessica Mitchell, Richard Kerr, and the Intellect team for guiding us through the process with care and professionalism. George would like to thank his wife Sue, daughters Maddie and Sophie, and parents Ed and Marie, for their ongoing support. Graham would like to thank his brother Brendan, parents June and Walter, and proxy parents Shar Levine and Paul Rosenberg. We both wish to acknowledge colleagues Carl Leggo, Rita Irwin, Marv Westwood, Lynn Fels, and Fiona Walton who continue to be beacons of inspiration, friendship, and collegiality.

George and Graham

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Crowd Departing from Montreal Airport

Figure 2. Johnson’s Painting

Figure 3. Thomas’s Painting

Figure 4. Michael’s Painting

Figure 5. Stan’s Comic from the 2010 production of Athabasca’s Going Unmanned

Figure 6. Randy’s Birthday from the 2010 production of Athabasca’s Going Unmanned

Figure 7. The Meeting Ground and the Nottingham Lakeside Arts 20131 production of Inside Out of Mind

Figure 8. Silence from the 2014 production of The Return

Figure 9. Survivors Guilt from the 2014 production of The Return

Figure 10. Keeping the Wheels of Research Turning

Figure 11. In Rehearsal for Precious Moments

Foreword

John O’Toole and Judith Ackroyd

This book is a welcome addition to the literature on performed research, emphasizing the significance and growing recognition of research outputs that provide an alternative to the conventional written research report. When Judith’s Deputy Vice Chancellor saw an article about her research performance, he asked if there would be some proper, traditional outcomes! Almost by definition, especially in fields of dynamic research into human behaviour, the proper and traditional outcome – the written research report – often impoverishes what it reports on, and only has a limited specialist audience. Performing research offers an opportunity to provide a more holistic mode for sharing research findings, and one that brings back to life its living community. More than that, it permits research and its reportage to be both creative and aesthetic – still a contested proposition. When John and another colleague were describing that colleague’s recent experimental ethnographic performance work to a couple of researchers from more positivistic fields and personal persuasions, their outraged response was to protest that research was not supposed to be creative! This book is yet more evidence that it can be, and not only that, it can also be aesthetically satisfying.

Increasingly in some fields of human behaviour studies, particularly in education, health, and human services research, researchers are turning to the broad range of methodologies and possibilities that performing research offers. This book is a further contribution to the field, providing many examples of projects that, first, bring their research subjects and participants back to life; second, aid further understanding; and third, help to extend the practice. As the proliferation of such work grows, the rest of the academy is obliged to take it seriously… and its strength as an outcome of research will be more widely understood and valued.

The book’s structure neatly points the way to this new understanding. Each chapter gives us a case study beginning with setting the scene, then providing examples from the scripts of the performances described, and follows that with an extended discussion, sometimes of the research and development process itself, sometimes of the outcomes, audience responses and further development, and sometimes all of these.

In many ways this is a very generous book. The introductory sections provide careful, comprehensive, and often loving descriptions of the research context: the site and the participant subjects, the origins and background of the research, and the personal and professional motivations of the researchers. These are followed by extremely generous extracts of the scripts and playtexts themselves, long enough, for a change, for the reader to get a real flavour of the piece, its atmosphere, and the voices of the participants and witnesses. These, in turn, are followed by a section comprising further comprehensive and thoroughly detailed description of the processes that drove the project, the writing and the performances, how they were received, and retrospective discussion, as well as other insights and findings the writers identified as new knowledge.

The next feature to note is the admirable range and diversity in a variety of dimensions that the book offers. Above all, the book illustrates the diversity of possibilities of this kind of research and research reporting. Diversity can be seen throughout the process and products of the samples provided in this text. The book gives us a variety of:

•motives and drivers for the researchers – the thing that made them start the research

•contexts of the research and its participants – the place and people involved or targeted

•geography and setting – the research site and how it was set up

•methodology and procedures involved in the data gathering and reflection

•subjective and objective approaches to data and its validation, or crystallization into performance

There is more diversity of audiences than might be expected from the customary work in this field, which has tended to be for private colloquia among co-researchers, for refractive playback to the research subjects, or for students to learn from. All these are present in this collection, and their different needs quickly become apparent. But many of these studies are less directly targeted toward specific audiences, which fosters a much more diffused set of opportunities to what audiences might see and hear in the performance space.

Richly diverse too, and connected with the question of audiences, is the broad range of perspectives and purposes for the performance. Many are indeed for specific audiences in fields such as health, education, and human service; however, they share an educational purpose that comes from very different perspectives. Some of the researchers have come to the research, and generated the project, with a purpose of advocacy – delineating and then demonstrating the efficacy of an approach to a social problem or a set of principles. There are the educational dialogists, raising questions for audiences of students or a general public to answer, and challenges for them to address. There are the more didactic presentations where the research has indicated there are important messages and statements of principle to be communicated, especially to audiences of students. Then there are the reflective and inviting performances, the non-judgemental glimpses into other communities and other places. And there are the more introspective – the autoethnographers – whose research seeks to plumb their own inner lives, and put their hearts on their sleeve and indeed, put themselves in front of audiences.

There are of course many tensions and difficult dilemmas endemic to the field and the forms of performance research, as we ourselves have pointed out elsewhere. Arguably the book’s most noteworthy diversity is in its illustration of the broad range of choices and priorities that the researchers have made in the way they have dealt with those tensions.

•There are the questions of purpose. Many of the researchers here are working in fields involving education – both formal schooling of children and adults, and contexts of health education, human services provision, etc. The educational purposes within themselves raise the classic pedagogical tension between teaching as giving answers and solving problems, and teaching as asking questions and provoking dialogue.

•Connected with the purpose of the research is the tension of power, and whose purpose will be served. There is a lively and pertinent current debate about the rights of the researched, especially when they may be seen to be different from the researchers culturally, economically, or in terms of need and risk. This involves the question of audience, again – if the research is intended for an audience of the research subjects themselves, presumably (or not?) the research must be seen to be directly serving their interests and be supported by authoritative resources to validate the approach the researchers have taken. But if the research is intended to inform or educate others instead, what is the balance of rights and power then? And further, if the audience is mixed or general, and part of the purpose is to illuminate (or dare we say, entertain?) them, where do the original research subjects stand? When do the researchers, or their audience, metamorphose into voyeurs? It is refreshing to see that many of the authors address this issue robustly.

•Then there are the tensions involved in bringing together art and research, especially in the matter of creating theatrical effect and dramatic dialogue. Neither research interviews nor researchers’ observation notes and videos are usually in themselves the least bit theatrical or dramatic. Dramatic truth is a kind of truth that is literally artificial (making art). Even script taken verbatim must be heavily selected, and then interpreted and spoken. Is the actor’s emphasis as the participant’s was, with all the unspoken subtexts? Then there is a necessary creativity in the use of a different space from the original interview or observed action: of setting and set, of colour, music, clothing, props and the relationships between actor and audience. All this is part of the creative process that is brought into play (into a play) when research data is worked into performance. What is the balance between telling the witness’ story authentically, or accurately describing the field, and creating a watchable and memorable piece of performance? It is a delicate balance of choices and priorities, and one of the absorbing aspects of this book is how variously and divergently the authors have prioritized and chosen. Some stick rigidly to the record and the verbatim, others give themselves more artistic licence, and others still try to tilt the equilibrium further to find new forms and more extreme artistry.

Just as beauty and the aesthetic are (at least somewhat) in the eye of the beholder, so too are truth and authenticity. The authors have been brave and given these generous extracts, as well as their exhaustive explanations, to us as a third audience to exercise a-plenty our own critical analysis and judgements. And those judgements themselves will of course be the result of our own choices and priorities. Enjoy your critical journey through the book.

Introduction

Graham W. Lea and George Belliveau

Research-based theatre, an umbrella term for the various uses of theatre in research, is an increasingly common methodology for engaging in academic research. Drawing from theatre artistry and arts-based and qualitative research approaches, the methodology has potential to engage researchers and audiences in critical and empathetic explorations within a live and ephemeral space. In this book we share twelve recent projects integrating various approaches to research-based theatre. These chapters represent but a small portion of the diverse work in this expanding field; as such, this book is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather, our intent is to offer examples of approaches that have emerged in research-based theatre over the past decade (Sinclair & Belliveau, 2014). The chapters showcase both emerging and established scholar/artists, while highlighting projects from a wide range of international settings. Initiatives from six continents are featured, including work from Kenya, Singapore, Columbia, Australia, UK, and Canada. While the research emerges from a broad international milieu, both research and scriptwriting emerge from western/European academic and theatre traditions. The chapter authors represented come from various research traditions, yet they all share a commitment to engage with theatrical conventions while pursuing their research.

Each chapter explores unique ways of working with research-based theatre as a methodology, and together help foster deeper understandings and insights of artistic/scholarly possibilities. The 12 projects carefully and consciously weave the artistic and scholarly, honouring both art and research (Prendergast & Belliveau, 2013). A commitment to developing a theatre piece was part of each research project, which offers insights to better understand and represent their content and findings. As such, in the majority of examples in the upcoming chapters, theatre became a way to both generate and represent understandings from the research.

The book is loosely divided into three sections Education, Health, and Community. A number of projects cut across these headings; however, we have placed the respective chapters in their sections based on the intended audiences for their work and the initial impetus of the research project. The chapters within each of these sections provide:

1) a brief description of the research project

2) an extended excerpt of the research-based theatre script

3) a critical commentary about the research and artistic process

The four chapters in section I on Education offer insights into various non-traditional educational sites. In chapter 1, Graham Lea explores his relationship with his mother as they reflect on their teaching experiences in rural Kenya, 40 years apart. The research-based script crosses time and space in its artistic interpretation of extensive data. In chapter 2, Betsy Ferrer Okello also takes the reader to Kenya, where she co-developed a fictional script with local students from Kisumu. Using art and drama, the play-built ethnographic-based script becomes a site of agency for the students to express their lived experiences. Chapter 3 has Diane Conrad bring to life her extensive ethnographic research with incarcerated youth, showing the complex relationships between social workers and the primarily aboriginal inmates. Her fictional script and critical commentary provoke the reader to reconsider attitudes and perceptions of incarcerated youth in Canada. In the final chapter of section I, Christine Sinclair and Anne Harris invite the reader to consider pedagogical ways of engaging with arts-based research. In a carefully crafted dialogue between two instructors and their students, the authors examine key issues confronting scholars who work in arts-based forms.

Section II focuses on Health and features four chapters. It begins with chapter 5 by Julia Gray and Gail Mitchell, who developed a research-based script on safety and interprofessional (mis)communications within hospitals. The authors speak of their careful attention to aesthetically represent their research data, as well as their commitment to advocate for improved conditions in health care in Canada. Chapter 6 takes the reader to the UK where Tanya Myers and Justine Schneider transform their research about health care assistants into a poetic script. The authors speak of the impact of engaging with the tools of the theatre to provide deeper insights into the complexity of the role of health care assistants. For their chapter, Linda Hassall and Michael Balfour probe into the difficult return of military personnel and their families in their Australian-based theatre project. Their research-based drama is co-performed with military veterans who bring to light the challenging transition from military to civilian life. In chapter 8, a team of researchers from Victoria, Canada dramatize extensive data on the challenges older drivers and their families face. The authors consider key aspects of the playwriting process and post-production discussions as meaningful sites of research.

Section III on Community begins with chapter 9 by Jane Bird where she examines the competitive and complicated world of women in leadership positions. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Bird’s script draws on extensive interviews with women and was developed to stimulate discussion about the central issues women face in research leadership. In chapter 10, Prue Wales shares a research-based piece on the difficult conditions of foreign domestic workers in Singapore. The ethnographic play presents the reader with a series of ethical dilemmas and opens discussions around power dynamics in her depiction of a fictional confrontation between a Filipino helper and her employer. Tara Goldstein, in chapter 11, presents the complex reality of transnational/transracial adoptive LGBTQ families within her research-informed play. The fictional Colombian-born children depicted within her play face a number of challenges in their new Canadian home, allowing Goldstein to provoke critical and pedagogical discussions on issues of race, gender, sexuality, and family. In the book’s final chapter, George Belliveau and Rita Irwin explore their artistic identities using autobiographic memories. They describe how the development process deeply informed and influenced their research-based script Precious Moments. The authors show how research-based theatre can be used as data generation and how this methodology is informed by a/r/tographic approaches.

Why Theatre as a Methodological Approach?

Artists have long used theatre as an approach to explore the social world around them. From Aristophanes’s Lysistrata and Shakespeare’s Macbeth to contemporary works such as Bennett’s A Chorus Line and Kaufman’s The Laramie Project, playwrights have used theatre to comment upon, and sometimes challenge, the world outside the theatre walls. This impulse to explore the social world using