Identity Crisis? Employing Applied Theater Examples to Discern the Research in Art and/or the Art in Research

• In Event: What Shall We Name the Baby? Identifying the Art in Research and Research in the Arts

Abstract

Objectives

Applied Theatre (Prendergast & Saxton, 2010 and Prentki & Preston, 2009) or Theatre in Education (Jackson, 1993) and Popular Theatre (Kidd, 1984) as it was called prior to 2000 has long been a pedagogical tool for social animation. Participants, usually non-actors, are led through a series of participatory theatre techniques that enable them to glean new insights about their lived-experiences. Performances can be internally presented to one another or externally to an invited audience. In most cases, the theatre making is the process and the insights are the product. Reports are written and while not labeled as such, they are examples of arts-based pedagogy (Denzin, 2003) and seldom referred to as research.

Some, however, do frame their applied theatre work and/or dramatizations as a form of inquiry/research (Donmoyer & Donmoyer, 1995; Mienczakowski, 1995; Saldaña, 2005; Fels & Beliveau, 2008; Norris, 2009; Conrad 2012 and Goldstein, 2012) regarding the emerging insights from the dramatizations as data and/or the data dramatized with Donmoyer & Donmoyer and Norris claiming that data generation, its analysis and dissemination occurring simultaneously. Within the field of applied theatre there exists individuals conducting the same work with different frames. How are they similar? How are they different?

This study investigated the complex identity of ABR, articulating the interplay among, pedagogy, the arts and research and the demands each places on this research genre.

Perspective(s)

O’Donoghue (2009) argues, “arts-based researchers cannot ignore the processes and practices of artists as they continue to develop and theorize a counter-hegemonic research discourse’, aligning himself to the parental disciplines within the arts. But this is only one of the two parents of ‘arts’-based ‘research’ (p. 352). While not all research is art, the reciprocal is also true, not all art is research. What responsibilities, if any, do arts-based researchers (ABR) have to their parent disciplines or has it matured into its own identity with its own unique, albeit, diverse set of canons?

Methods/Data Sources

This study is an inquiry into ABR itself, primarily the subgenre of performance. Short video-examples of applied theatre performances on academic integrity, alcohol abuse on campus, the lived-experiences of social workers, and violence in the workplace this presentation will be analyzed, integrating current literature, to elucidate salient issues of the methodology (Outlined later).


Results

There presently exists a number of traits and constraints defining/naming ABR with the term being problematic. This study addresses the ongoing debates of quality of art, the quality of inquiry (Barone, 2007), the danger of using the standards of the parental disciplines (Norris, 2011), the false dichotomy of process and product, the tensions between participatory pedagogy and production, the interplay of representation and meaning, and the crisis of representation (Miller, 2011) that define ABR.

Significance

Through exemplars, this paper will advance our understanding of some of the diverse and, sometimes, competing positions within ABR, assisting those in this endeavor to make appropriate choices as they frame/name their work.

Author

• Joe Norris, Brock University