Introductory description

TH992-30 Researching Performance/Performing Research

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

1. Introduction: Overview of the conceptualisation and approach to this module. It will outline the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research methods. Discuss the important of Situating the practitioner/ researcher
2. Approaches to Applied Theatre: scope (education/ community) and issues arising (legitimating, effect, ethics) compared to socially engaged theatre.
3. Decolonising research methodologies.
4. Archival research – ethics and implications of selecting and curating archival material (potentially shared with Dramaturgical Thinking for Script Development, MAPA)
5. Action research: Participation, Observation, Thick description - Oral History and interviewing (potentially shared with Dramaturgical Thinking for Script Development, MAPA)
6. Reading week
7. (Auto)Ethnographic research – collaboration & writing (potentially shared with Dramaturgical Thinking for Script Development, MAPA)
8. Performance as research – designing a project to engage research with audiences
9. Performance as research: Feedback methods
10. Online v offline research: audiences, data and coding.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Identify specific research methods appropriate for a variety of applied and socially engaged performance contexts, and understand the issues involved in working with them.
• Understand the ways in which specific topics may impact the ways in which practitioners working in these contexts may choose to tackle issues through the arts. For example, how the ways in which specific discourses (on human rights, notions of the public sphere, psychiatric care, gender politics, trauma, cities, ecologies) or histories (colonial and post-colonial) can inform ways of working and research outcomes.
• Understand how to apply specific research methods both from theatre and performance studies and other disciplines in their arts’ practice.

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Research element

This is a module focussed on research skills, methods and critical frameworks, so this is at the heart of the module.

Interdisciplinary

Theatre is by definition engaged with other fields - so we will conside rhow psychological and sociological models and frameworks impact how we plan and research applied theatre practices.

International

We will look at methodologies from the global north and south, including indigenous research methodologies from First Nation peoples.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop research skills, research methods, critical frameworks and approaches to study that inform processes of making and creating performance in context that engage various publics with practitioners and researchers. It will help students to develop their work in relation to ethical considerations that arise when employing specific research methods in these contexts.

Transferable skills

Research skills, methodologies, writing skills
Ability to work with publics ethically