ABSTRACT

Performance as Research (PAR) is characterised by an extraordinary elasticity and interdisciplinary drive. Performance as Research: Knowledge, Methods, Impact celebrates this energy, bringing together chapters from a wide range of disciplines and eight different countries. This volume focuses explicitly on three critical, often contentious themes that run through much discussion of PaR as a discipline:

  • Knowledge - the areas and manners in which performance can generate knowledge
  • Methods - methods and methodologies for approaching performance as research
  • Impact - a broad understanding of the impact of this form of research

These themes are framed by four essays from the book's editors, contextualising their interrelated conversations, teasing out common threads, and exploring the new questions that the contributions pose to the field of performance. As both an intervention into and extension of current debates, this is a vital collection for any reader concerned with the value and legitimacy of performance as research.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction I: Wherefore PAR?

Discussions on “a line of flight”

chapter 1|12 pages

On PAR

A dialogue about performance-as-research

chapter 2|18 pages

Research-based practice

Facilitating transfer across artistic, scholarly, and scientific inquiries

chapter 3|25 pages

The daisy chain model

An approach to epistemic mapping and dissemination in performance-based research

chapter |9 pages

Introduction II: Threads

Linking PAR practice across spectrums

chapter 4|21 pages

A new rhetoric

Notes on performance as research in academia

chapter 5|28 pages

Research as theatre (RaT)

Positioning theatre at the centre of PAR, and PAR at the centre of the academy

chapter 7|18 pages

Antromovimento

Developing a new methodology for theatre anthropology

chapter 8|15 pages

PAR and decolonisation

Notemakings from an Indian and South African context

chapter 9|23 pages

Containers of practice

Would you step into my shell?

chapter 11|26 pages

Choreographic practice-as-research

Visualizing conceptual structures in contemporary dance

chapter 12|22 pages

The city (as) place

Performative remappings of urban space through artistic research

chapter 13|14 pages

Resonance in the steps of Rubicon

chapter 14|22 pages

Violence and performance research methods

Direct-action, “die-ins,” and allyship in a Black Lives Matter era 1