Thinking again: enaction as a resource for ‘practice as research’ in theatre and performance

Abstract

In the context of global research culture, practitioner-researchers in theatre and performance have consistently struggled to best account for the embodied and emergent qualities of their subjects. As methodologies for 'practice as research' (PaR) in theatre and performance have developed since the 1990s, artistic researchers have often continued to define themselves against scientific conceptions of thinking, knowledge, and research to highlight the specific efficacies of artistic practice. I argue that this strategy genuinely hinders researchers, and that interdisciplinary approaches that move across the sciences, humanities, and arts are the key to robust accounts of theatre and performance. By revisiting a seminal PaR performance project, Joanne 'Bob' Whalley and Lee Miller's Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain (2002), I suggest how interdisciplinary approaches such as enaction from the cognitive sciences should be integrated into PaR methodologies to better address the complexity and richness of embodiment and emergence in theatre and performance.

Transdisciplinary solutions to methodological and ethical problems in performing arts psychology

“…Rather than waiting for institutional and material conditions to fully undergo the changes that de Oliviera and Baggs call for, the RBP model acknowledges (1) that different methodologies can examine different aspects of a phenomenon, including aspects that otherwise are hidden by the WEIRD paradigm; and (2) that combining methodologies therefore can be a useful driver of diversification. Instead of hoping to integrate different disciplines under a single epistemological framework, our model is recognized for enabling collaborators to produce multiple kinds of knowledge through productive inter-disciplinary discovery and collaboration (e.g., Ciesielski, 2023 ; Murphy, 2023 ). When the different results and the interdisciplinary exchange are brought together in response to the original and shared research questions and practices studied, then we arrive at transdisciplinary knowledge.…”

“…Transdisciplinary frameworks like the RBP model may begin to address some of the systemic factors that produce WEIRD bias from within. When such frameworks are used in performing arts psychology to bring subject-specific and practice-based forms of knowledge and research into collaboration with scientific inquiry, then grounding in specific practices and contexts of practice become stronger (see Ciesielski, 2023 ; Murphy, 2023 ; Shaughnessy et al, 2023 ). This furthermore means that homogenized sample groups no longer can remain hidden under universalized findings, as the specific practices, practice-context, and its associated sample group will be more transparent.…”

“… 3 For perspectives on what subject-specific fields may gain in turn (see Ross, 2018 ; Murphy, 2023 ). …”