researching performance & medicine

I am curious about the various ways in which contemporary performance intersects with medicine, health and healthcare. Performance is a multi-model artform with a capricious relation to reality - embodied, material and yet metaphoric and surreal - and so ideal for capturing and conveying human experiences of ill health, disability and trauma; of treatment and care; as well as the deeply ambivalent position that medicine holds in the public imagination. 

methodology

My main methodology is pratice/artistic research: I make performances with my company Chimera, diving deeply into a specific aspect of medical experience for each project. Each project is grounded in contextual/conceptual reading and in people's experiences which I unearth through a sort of performance ethnography, often involving observations, interviews and creative reflection. Devising is my way of making sense of the resulting material without flattening out complexity and contradictions: working with professional artists and medical collaborators, we stage scenarios that represent people's experiences, often in expressionistic and metaphorical ways that get at affective and intersubjective dimensions as well as outward behaviours. Sharing the resulting performances offers another platform for collecting a range of perspectives on the topic.   Each project generates a constellation of more convention research outputs - conference papers, journal ariticles, essays and books - as well as accompanying educational resources.

contribution

My work contributes to an emerging field of scholarship in theatre and performance studies that is mapping out the intersection with medicine: Petra Kuppers' Scar of Visibility, Emma Brodzinski's Theatre in Health and Care, Kat Low's Performing Health and Wellbeing and Gianna  Bouchard's Performing Specimens are some of my companions in this project. I also campaign for more recognition of performance (practice and research) within the medical humanities and in medical and healthcare educational and related research (Alan Bleakely is an ally in this cause). My research generates outputs - performances, educational and public engagement actitivies and resources - that have impact beyond the academic sphere.

I was drawn to academic reearch because I wanted to puzzle over questions and conumdrums born in the rehearsal studio and my early experiences of making performances through devising: how a coherent piece of art can be created by a group of people with different skills, interests, perspectives; the hidden hierarchies and power inequalities in supposedly anti-hierarchical groups; the ingenuity, resourceful and humanity of theatre makers. For my PhD I sat in on devising processes by Forced Entertainment, David Glass Ensemble and Gary Stephens, developing of framework for analysing group theatre-making (available on request if that sounds interesting!). I extended this rehearsal observation-based methodology for my first book, Devising in Process, edited with Jackie Smart, with further article, book chapters exploring devising by women and at the National Theatre.  One of my recent publications celebrates Lightwork, a company led by Andy Lavender specializing in 'multi-media' and collaborative performance.