I started out very excited. Performance and research! Performance research. Research performance. Art-based Research. Arts as Inquiry. Performance as Inquiry. Performance as Product. What a fascinating combination. It evokes the same visceral excitement as when I first discovered drama therapy. Using drama as therapy, How cool is that! Using performance as research, How cool is that! They both sound new, creative, evocative and important. They are alternatives.
I love alternatives.
So, doing a performance on choosing performance as a research method...
This is a quote from Qualitative Inquiry:
“Performance is understood broadly to include live public practices and spectacle (instrumental, vocal, rap, or rhythmic display, dance, theatre, ritual and religious ceremonies, parades, political rallies and spontaneous demonstrations, funerals, and other forms of cultural demonstration)— traditional and emerging forms of public visual display (cinema, museum exhibitions, monuments, photography, video, digital media, etc.) – and the representation or reinterpretation of socially created manifestations of ‘the me and the we’ that individuals toggle back and forth between in the generatioin of a public identity.”
When I enter into performance as it calls me forward, I fear the unknown and anticipate the unknown, a hidden world, a scary place.
I’m a doer and a witness. I’m hard-working and enthusiastic. I’m my thoughts and my feelings. I’m my action and my insight. I’m my words and my movements. I’m my voice and my sensation. I’m my mind and my body.
Many have said that the body is the site of knowledge, a site of multiple inscriptions — environmental, political, imaginary, familial, scientific and social.
In performance, I’m no longer cut-off from my body. I inhabit my body. I’m the body in action, the body in a process of change. I’m the changing body.
(“I’m the changing body” movement)
Performance cannot live without audience.
I ask myself two questions:
(Assessing arts-based qualitative inquiry (Finley, 2003), Does the research provoke questions, rather than draw conclusions?
Is the practice and the representation of research passionate and visceral? Does it involve activity that creates opportunities for communion among participants, researchers, and the various discourse communities who might be audiences of (and participants with) the research text? *
And stories.
March 2004, in Montreal, I was asked, ‘what is drama therapy?’
I had no knowledge. I had no training. I didn’t know.
And yet I knew. There was an answer. An intuitive one. I told a story.
(She told the story as if she was in the interview)
Well, um, drama therapy, I had some training in theatre and I found myself changing…and I worked in drama education for kids, and I can see them changing…changing from being in the process…It’s almost like it’s you and it’s not you at the same time…you’re acting and pretending and yet you’re your true self doing…
Now, two year from then, there is a personal, institutional and relational history in searching of the answer to the same question.
WHAT IS DRAMA THERAPY?
HOW CAN I ANSWER THIS QUESTION NOW?
WHAT IS MY ANSWER?
HOW DO I EMBODY THIS HISTORY AND SEARCHING?
HAS THIS EXPERIENCE BECOME PART OF MY EMERGING, DEVELOPING IDENTITY?
There was a transition happened two years ago, for the physical me, the cultural me, the emotional me and the intellectual me.
It is still happening today.
This physical, emotional, cultural, intellectual transition happens whenever I come out of my apartment, walk down
St. Catherine Street
and arrive at the VA building. It follows me into the room 200.
There lies the river of knowledge.
I looked at them. Now I decide to go into the water, and flow.
I’m looking at myself, backward and forward, inward and outward.
It is a process of becoming.
WHAT IS MY STORY OF BECOMING?
MY PERSONAL NARRATIVE, NARRATIVE OF THE SELF.
The me as a subject and an object in a culturally interpreted and reinterpreted story. The me as a witness to the story.
The me as a participant who interacts with the story, told or hidden, partially revealed and partially evolving.
There is a present me and the me in the reflection.
There is part of me I do not see myself, but you as an audience see in the mirror image of my back, as I enter the performance, and reveal it to your interpretation.
I will perform it for you.
(She gathers the books and papers together.)
I will perform it for you.
I will perform.
*
Finley, S. (2003). Arts-based inquiry in QI: Seven years from crisis to guerrilla warfare. Qualitative inquiry, 9 (2), 281-296.
