ABSTRACT
This chapter frames performance as an affective ecology. It contributes to discussions of the ethics and ethos of the facilitation of theatre-making practice in applied theatre by proposing that creative activity creates a space of potentiality. Commenting on debates in the field of applied theatre around personal transformation and social change (Hughes and Nicholson 2016; Snyder-Young 2013), ethics (Hunter 2008), risk and vulnerability (O’Grady 2017), the concept of a space of potentiality is offered as a framework for encapsulating the way in which an ethically engaged practitioner might navigate the complex systems of interaction that compose the affective experience of collaborative theatre-making, creating unique, temporary time-spaces which may support processes of personal and social change. This is presented as the ethical-political ethos upon which a recovery-engaged approach to performance is based. An analysis of theatre-making practice with performers in recovery illustrates that for people in recovery spaces of potentiality (created through performance activity) may support the personal and interpersonal development of a recovery identity.
