Playing The Fool: An aesthetic of relationality as a brave & vulnerable approach to performance-research Julia Gray, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow - Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research, University of Toronto September 27, 2017
Background Alert! Cross-disciplinary collaborations are on the rise! Includes: Health and social sciences, Humanities, Arts Qualitative researchers critically theorize arts-based research; aim for legitimacy in the sciences Arts scholars expressed concern about fitting artistic practices into social scientific methodological boxes
What gets valued as knowledge? What are the processes that produce that knowledge?
Situating myself Artist-researcher, humanist and social scientist (maybe?) Working with health and social scientists for over 10 years In my work: asked about my positionality and my relationship to the research findings how did these align with the way the research-informed play was shaped through the form of theatre
Situating myself I am in the middle of my artistic practice, as an embodied, imaginative, vulnerable human being I am always creating in relation to other people, balancing to not overtake other people s experiences without self-erasure
My study aimed to explore How artist-researchers foolishly draw on their own embodiment and imagination as ways to understand and explore the research findings, including experiences of research participants and insights provided by social and health researchers how they conceptualize the intended audience and how those understandings shape the creative process of the research-informed play.
Methodology - overview Case study methodology (Creswell, 2013; Yin, 2009) Phenomenological approach (Ahmed, 2006) Case - Cracked: new light on dementia Participants - me as playwright/director; 6 actors Ahmed, Sara. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. London: Duke University Press Creswell, John W. (2013). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (3rd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Yin, Robert K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (Vol. 5). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Cracked: new light on dementia Playwright/director: Julia Gray (that s me!) Health Researchers: Sherry Dupuis, Pia Kontos, Gail Mitchell and Christine Jonas-Simpson Actors/Co-creators: Susan Applewhaite, Lori Nancy Kalamanski, Mary Ellen MacLean, Tim Machin, Claire Frances Muir, Mark Prince, David Talbot To challenge the discourse of tragedy and loss that is dominant regarding dementia and associated care practices
Theatrical Devising In these photos: Susan Applewhaite, Lori Nancy Kalamanski, Mary Ellen MacLean, Tim Machin, Claire Frances Muir, Andy Pogson, David Talbot Design (costume/set): Lindsay Anne Black Photography: Dahlia Katz
Data and Analysis Data included: my own process journals as playwright/director video footage of rehearsals, works-in-progress presentations and performances video-taped interviews with actors my hand-written creative notes from our in studio work and drafts of the script.
Theory! Three theoretical concepts: Embodiment Imagination Foolishness
Embodiment The relationship between bodies and spaces (cultural, social, historical, among others) Bodily horizon - a space for action in that it allows the body to extend out into the world Wonky or queer moments - happen when bodies and their actions in space come out of line; disruptions of the normative and offer insight Ahmed, Sara. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. London: Duke University Press.
Imagination Allows us to extend our experience and ideas beyond what is immediately present to our senses by drawing on our previous embodied experience as a starting point to relate Imaginative wide-awakeness a kind of open awareness, reflection and attention, moving to see possibilities beyond the current situation and one s own point of view Greene, Maxine. (2001). Variations on a Blue Guitar: the Lincoln Center Institute lectures on aesthetic education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Foolishness Engaging bravely, vulnerably, experimentally with a willingness to be wrong and try anyway Foolish witness - one who enters an encounter with another person with the attitude of a clown (Salverson) Fail Better Samuel Beckett, Irish playwright (Worstward Ho) Salverson, Julie. (2006). Witnessing subjects: a fool's help. In J. Cohen-Cruz & M. Schutzman (Eds.), A Boal companion: Dialogues on theatre and cultural politics (pp. 146-156). New York: Routledge. Beckett, Samuel (1983). Worstward Ho. New York: Grove Press.
An aesthetic of relationality An aesthetic space where a multiplicity of people are invited to imaginatively and foolishly explore the interrelationship among our bodies, actions and social/cultural/historical spaces Believing - an imaginative commitment, working to see what is in front of you not attempting to see the objective or the concrete mutually imaginatively committing, exposing, touching, with the words, actions, emotions, the way your body moves, the way you hear things, the way you smell things and see things.
How does this happen?: Modes of Practice Playful Extending Foolish Disrupting Inventive Disrupting
Playful extending An artist-researcher starts in her own embodiment, but then imaginatively and actively draws on, and moves past her own embodiment to enact gestures of embodied, imagined understanding of the research findings, including the experiences of the original research participants Involves otherness - everything that is not you Involves play - experimental, responsive and involves reciprocal, dialogic actions of all involved
Foolish disrupting An artist-researcher attends to the relationship between her own embodiment in space and time and research findings, by bravely and vulnerably risking failure or being wrong in order to disrupt her own bodily horizon and gesture differently attends to the messiness of not knowing emotionally, sensorily, imaginatively and physically risks failure in order to aesthetically understand the research findings differently
Inventive disrupting Through the disruption of the artist-researcher s own bodily horizon and the extension of that body, surrounding physical and social/cultural/historical spaces are also re-invented as something they are not By imaginatively extending a body in a particular way (miming eating, for example) - possibility for space to acquire a certain direction other than what it might actually be (becomes an imagined dining room)
Considering Audiences Artist-researchers imagine the ways audience members might engage with the play in the future these conceptions and imaginings inform the creative process. Create with the anticipation that audience members will themselves playfully extend towards the performance playful extending holds the potential to lead to a foolish disruption and move into newly imagined social/cultural/historical spaces
Example Writing Tom is Lost The scene - between Vera, a woman in her 70s who is in the early stages of dementia, and Tom, her husband of over 40 years. aimed to explore changing relationships for couples experiencing dementia, specifically about intimacy and sex Foolish disrupting and playful extending are not only about what the physical body does (which is most obvious in exploring the work of the actors), but about all actions artist-researchers engage in as embodied, imaginative and foolish
Conclusion Following Denzin s call (2017), an aesthetic of relationality: unsettles deeply entrenched assumptions about what counts as research, as evidence, as legitimate inquiry places discomfort and disruption at the centre of exploration, and aligns with inspiration and unpredictability (Halberstam, 2011, p. 10) further equips critical scholars to resist oppressive dominant discourses, rethink failure as a productive way to challenge neoliberal notions of productivity, and imagine new possibilities and hopeful futures Denzin, Norman (2017) Critical Qualitative Inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(1), 8-18. Halberstam, J. (2011) The Queer Art of Failure. London: Duke University Press
Thank you! Publication: Gray, J. & Kontos, P. (In Press) An aesthetic of relationality: embodiment, imagination and playing the fool in research- informed theatre. Qualitative Inquiry Julia Gray, PhD jgray@hollandbloorview.ca @PossibleArts