Through a Glass Brightly: Generative Ethical Tensions in Research-Based Theatre

Michalovich, Amir; Mayer, Yael; Hershler, Laen; Bulk, Laura Yvonne; Cook, Christina; Graf, Hila; Lee, Michael; Belliveau, George; Jarus, Tal

doi:10.1177/10778004221097677

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 21 publications

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“…Different from theatre for public consumption, RbT places care and ethical considerations of community partners it collaborates with at the forefront. Decisions on moving the process forward are done in collaboration with the community partners making sure they agree and are comfortable with the approaches used by the artists and researchers (Cox et al 2022;Michalovich et al 2022).…”

Section: Scene 3: Numbers Are People Toomentioning

confidence: 99%

Viewpoints/Points of View: Building a Transdisciplinary Data Theatre Collaboration in Six Scenes

Snyder-Young,

Arnold Mages,

Bhargava

et al. 2024

Arts

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Data now plays a central role in civic life and community practices. This has created a pressing need for new forms of translation and sense-making that can engage diverse publics. Research-based Theatre (RbT) has proven to be an effective approach to delivering qualitative data to community stakeholders. We extend this tradition by proposing “community-engaged data theatre”. This approach translates quantitative data into theatrical language to engage communities in deliberative conversations on relevant issues. Community-engaged data theatre requires bridging multiple disciplines and involves creating new definitions and shared vocabularies in discourses that formerly have had little overlap in meaning. In this article, we share key insights from our initial experiments in which we adapted quantitative and qualitative data to devise a pilot piece in collaboration with a local community partner. In this essay, we communicate our collaborative process in polyvocal, artistic form. We edit and adapt materials from our conversations and creative practices into scenes illustrating how we taught and learned from each other about data science, participatory modeling, material deliberation and Composition to pilot our lab’s first community-engaged data theatre prototype.

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Section: Scene 3: Numbers Are People Toomentioning

confidence: 99%

Viewpoints/Points of View: Building a Transdisciplinary Data Theatre Collaboration in Six Scenes

Snyder-Young,

Arnold Mages,

Bhargava

et al. 2024

Arts

Self Cite

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Promoting inclusion for disabled students in healthcare education: Using research-based theatre to enhance knowledge and empathy

Mayer,

Hershler,

Bulk

et al. 2024

Nurse Education in Practice

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Applied Theatre: Research-Based Theatre, or Theatre-Based Research? Exploring the Possibilities of Finding Social, Spatial, and Cognitive Justice in Informal Housing Settlements in India, or Tales from the Banyan Tree

Busby

2024

Arts

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This article draws on a twenty-year relationship of short-term interventions with Dalit communities living in informal settlements, sub-cities and urban villages in Mumbai, that have sought to create public theatre events based on research by and with communities that celebrate, problematise and interrogate sustainable urban living. In looking back over the developments and changes to our working methods in Mumbai, I explore how the projects priorities the roles of the community as both researchers and artists. I consider where a specific applied theatre project, which focuses on site specific storytelling with Dalit communities in Worli Koliwada and Dharavi, functions on a continuum of interactive, participatory, and emancipatory practice, research and performance. Applied Theatre practices should not and cannot remain static, they need to be constantly reformed and as practitioners and researchers we need to constantly re-examine the ways in which we work. This chapter poses two central questions: firstly, can this long-term partnership between practitioners, researchers and artists from the UK and India working with community members genuinely be a space for co-creating knowledge and theatre? And secondly, if so, is this Theatre-based Research or Research Based Theatre? I interrogate Applied Theatre’s potential to create a space of cognitive justice, which must be the next step for applied theatre, along-side its more widely accepted aims of searching for social and spatial justice and which places the community as both artists and researchers. The Dalit social reality is one of oppression, based on three axes: social, economic and gender. The chapter explores how working as co-researchers and the public performance of their stories has been a form of ‘active citizenship’ for these participants and is a key part of their strategy in their demand for policy changes. In looking forward I ask how working in international partnerships with community members can promote cognitive justice and go beyond a merely participatory practice. I consider why it is vital for the field that applied theatre practice includes partners from both the global south and north working together to co-create knowledge, new methods of practice to ensure an applied theatre knowledge democracy. In doing so I will discuss if and how this work might be considered to be Theatre-based Research.

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Through a Glass Brightly: Generative Ethical Tensions in Research-Based Theatre

Cited by 3 publications

References 21 publications

Viewpoints/Points of View: Building a Transdisciplinary Data Theatre Collaboration in Six Scenes

Viewpoints/Points of View: Building a Transdisciplinary Data Theatre Collaboration in Six Scenes

Promoting inclusion for disabled students in healthcare education: Using research-based theatre to enhance knowledge and empathy

Applied Theatre: Research-Based Theatre, or Theatre-Based Research? Exploring the Possibilities of Finding Social, Spatial, and Cognitive Justice in Informal Housing Settlements in India, or Tales from the Banyan Tree

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