Drama Research Methods: Provocations of Practice

At a time when universities demand immediate and quantifiable impacts of scholarship, the voices of research participants become secondary to impact factors and the volume of research produced. Moreover, what counts as research within the academy constrains practices and methods that may more authentically articulate the phenomena being studied. When external forces limit methodological practices, research innovation slows and homogenizes.

This book aims to address the methodological, interpretive, ethical/procedural challenges and tensions within theatre-based research with a goal of elevating our field’s research practice and inquiry. Each chapter embraces various methodologies, positionalities and examples of mediation by inviting two or more leading researchers to interrogated each other’s work and, in so doing, highlighted current debates and practices in theatre-based research. Topics include: ethics, method, audience, purpose, mediation, form, aesthetics, voice, data generation, and research participants. Each chapter frames a critical dialogue between researchers that take multiple forms (dialogic interlude, research conversation, dramatic narrative, duologue, poetic exchange, etc.).

Peter Duffy, Ed.D. (2014), University of South Carolina, is an award winning associate professor and heads the Master of Arts in Teaching program in theatre education. His research includes cognition and the arts, culturally responsive pedagogies and performed research.

Christine Hatton, Ph.D. (2005), University of Sydney, is a lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle. Her scholarly interests include drama, arts education and gender in education.She was awarded the 2014 Faculty of Education and Arts Early Career Research Fellowship.

Richard Sallis, Ph.D., University of Melbourne, is a senior lecturer in arts education at the that university’s Graduate School of Education. His research includes arts education, gender and identity, and professional theatre for/with youth. He was the 2012 AATE Distinguished Dissertation Award recipient.