Writing research-based theatre on aged care: the ethnodrama, After Aleppo

ABSTRACT

This paper documents the visioning, crafting, and writing of an ethnodrama – a type of embodied writing that takes the form of a research-based play script – about one unusual experience within an aged care organization: what might happen when technology, specifically virtual reality, is implemented into this unique organizational setting? As well as reflecting on the artistic and scientific value of research-based theatre, the script of one of the monologue plays, After Aleppo, is shared. Play scripts are a uniquely creative form of embodied writing, helping people see, imagine, and better understand the experiences of others, with ethnodrama the translation and adaption of research into a written script. As well as generating empathy, this research-based theatre provides a novel form of knowledge translation to engage and educate the public and those working in aged care organizations, a diverse workforce dealing with issues of care relationships, ageing, technology, and death.

KEYWORDS:

• ageing
• aged care
• arts-based research
• carers
• ethnodrama
• playscript
• research-based theatre
• virtual reality

Introduction

Creative embodied writing, in the form of poems, novels, and scripts, has the potential to trigger significant embodied and emotional responses in readers as ideas are ‘shown and felt, not merely told’ (10; Batty and Baker 2018). Such intimate embodied feeling is the essence of embodied writing, which gives the personal lived experience of the body voice in a memorable and transformative manner. As Anderson (2021) explains, embodied writing invites ‘the readers perceptual, visceral, sensor­imotor, kinesthetic, and imaginal senses to quicken the words and images as though the experience described were their own’ (177), evoking an ‘enlivened sense of presence in and of the world’ and ‘a sympathetic resonance in readers’ (83-84; Anderson 2021). As Helin (2019) explains, in organization and management research, the ‘emergent, unfinished, and relational’ (1) nature of embodied writing has a unique ability to enable ‘inquiring, feeling, listening, and connecting during research’ (2), which in turn enables researchers (and readers) to ‘get lost’ (3), provoking new, unexpected ways of thinking, feeling, engaging with, and seeing the world.

In this paper, therefore, we explore how a play script, as a form of embodied writing, might (1) innovatively engage and educate an often disengaged public with issues of care relationships, ageing, technology, death, and dying; (2) serve as an innovative form of arts-based knowledge translation, educating the workforce within an aged care organization about the potential of advanced technologies (virtual reality) as a meaningful leisure activity for residents, and (3) inspire the broader research community to consider experimenting with a unique form of embodied writing, play scripts, in their next research project.

Our mode of embodied writing: research-based theatre, ethnodrama

Research-based theatre (RbT) is a general term for using theatre in research, and combining artistic theatre craft with scholarly knowledge to engage, educate, communicate, and disseminate research findings in a different form. Research-based theatre encompasses both ethnodrama, which is the play script (comprising of analysed and dramatized selections from the research, the experiences of research participants and/or the researchers’ interpretations), and ethnotheatre, which is the live performance of the script (see Lea 2012; Saldaña 2016). RbT, as Shigematsu et al. (2022) note is ‘a call to adventure for the academically minded to go beyond their comfort zone’ (351).

A growing number of researchers have used ethnotheatre to engage and educate audiences on issues of healthcare, ageing, dementia, and aged care. Several researchers have created and performed a research-based drama about living with dementia (I’m Still Here!, Mitchell, Jonas-Simpson, and Ivonoffski 2006; Cracked: new light on dementia, Kontos et al. 2018; Inside out of Mind; Schneider et al. 2014), while other recent plays have further explored the experience of war veterans returning home and transitioning from soldier to civilian life (Contact!Unload; Cox and Belliveau 2019), and specifically to improve knowledge about a specific healthcare issues, such as lymphedema (Ahmed et al., 2015) and traumatic brain injury (Colantonio et al., 2008). This process of ‘theatricalizing’ research findings shows rather than tell through an embodied and emotive creation that creates a unique space for ‘cathartic responses’ from audiences (Belliveau and Lea 2016). Cracked, for example, was produced collaboratively with a playwright, persons living with dementia, and family carers, and follows how two families experienced stigma associated with dementia. It has been performed 16 different times (for the public, at conferences, and in care homes), and offers alternative ways of engaging with and supporting persons living with dementia – thus fostering reflection, education, and change.

This dramatic form, and the embodied writing evident in playscripts and performance, has a unique ability to reach audiences beyond that of traditional research dissemination methods, encouraging reflection and change amongst its participants and audiences alike. Research-based theatre affords the opportunity for an embodied experience, facilitating recognition of issues and, critically, a transformative emotional and intellectual learning experience.

Ethnotheatre in organizational contexts

To date, there are limited accounts of ethnotheatre in aged care or organizational contexts. However, as Taylor and Hansen (2005) remind us, theatre can convey ‘the felt experience, the affect, and something of the tacit knowledge of the day-to-day, moment-to-moment reality of organizations’ (1224). As organizations grapple with ongoing development and change, embodied writing – such as ethnodrama – offers an unusually powerful way to engage, reflect, and educate.

Firstly, as Oparaocha and Danil (2020) note, theatre offers a unique way for organizations to imagine the future and to engage in alternate scenarios of what might be – and to actualize preferred and probable paths for possible future developments. Art-based practices have generally been proposed as fundamental to reimagining probable paths for future developments in business education (Kostera and Strauß 2022), offered as a pathway to shift the mindset of organizations and their leaders by encouraging creativity and morality amongst organizational managers from the moment their training begins at business school.

Arts-based approaches and research are ‘considered parts of a “creative turn” in organization studies’ (Mandalaki et al. 2022, 1225), using affective and sensorial experiences to address experiences that are often ignored or left invisible (Lafaire et al. 2022; Mandalaki et al. 2022).

Secondly, ‘theatre-based learning’ has been employed in organizational settings to facilitate change management (Descubes and McNamara 2015). For example, to develop and enhance ownership amongst corporate employees at a French utility company, a method of ‘improvizational cabaret’ was deployed as the foundation of a reflective process to overcome issues of change management, particularly focusing on relieving the tensions ‘between top-level macro strategy planning and operational micro-management’ (565).

Thirdly, research-based theatre has been used to understand and improve employee relationships, both amongst workers and with management – for example, to explore interpersonal working relationships and documenting how internal voices can influence and shape professional relationships (White and Belliveau 2011). For example, drawing on a three-year organizational ethnography with four fire and rescue services/fire training organizations in England, Mazzetti (2020) argued that the best way to share the workplace stress, the gender and hierarchical power struggles, and the disconnects in thinking and ideology observed, was through an ethno-drama – which brought the daily complexities of contemporary fire and rescue service to life while protecting participants anonymity.

Finally, applied theatre (a broad classification of theatre designed to benefit individuals, communities, and societies, of which ethnodrama is a subset; see Mermikides and Bouchard 2016) is being used as a corporate training strategy to ‘humanize managements and train employees’ (Sinha and D’Souza 2022, 431). Conversely, in 2009 experimental theatre company, Rimini Protokoll, flipped the application of theatrical techniques within a corporate context, borrowing a traditional corporate process and presenting it as a theatrical event (Biehl-Missal 2012). Rimini Protokoll invaded the Daimler corporation’s annual general meeting, pitching it as a theatrical performance. Audience members were secretly admitted to the AGM through the purchase of shares and proxy shareholder rights, rather than the purchasing of tickets. Once inside, these secret-theatre attendees were encouraged to interact with the corporate process through activities, such as completing checklists noting different events and formalities of the AGM as they were enacted. This was designed to draw ‘audience’ attention to certain elements of the AGM that were analogous to elements of theatrical performances, leading these shareholder audiences through a corporate story in-action. Rimini Protokoll’s colonization of the AGM itself was presented to these audience/shareholders as a dramatic work, which they became an active part of.

Surrounded by genuine shareholders, managers, and corporate leaders going about their usual AGM business, potentially unaware of the theatrical spectacle they were cast and performing in. As Biehl-Missal confirms, in the case of Rimini Protokoll and Daimler, ‘the theatrical intervention is undertaken without organizational support, and, unlike other theatre interventions previously researched, where it is designed to disrupt rather than support organizational objectives … [this] is a case where (postdramatic) theatre transgressed institutional stages to directly interfere with an organization’ (225, 2012). Organizations and theatre can engage and interact on a variety of levels, each able to influence the other in both constructive and disruptive ways. Theatre can also capture the moment. Most recently, Strauß et al. (2022) created a drama from the emails they sent to each other during the COVID-19 pandemic. These emails, which in actuality, at the end of life in aged care, many older people fear that their last few weeks, months, and years will, in fact, be spent alone, neglected and disembodied – which is another reason for intentionally employing embodied writing in this unusual context that most people fear and know very little about.

The project: research-based theatre on technological innovation in aged care

Research-based theatre can be also used to educate about organizational and operational change. That was the focus in this project¹, which created research-based theatre to document one unusual experience within an aged care organization: what might happen when technology, specifically virtual reality, is implemented into this unique organizational setting which is both a home for older residents and a workplace for staff. Despite a range of culture-change initiatives designed to foster consumer-directed, person-centred, and individualized models of care, the reality is that aged care has an image problem: many people fear old age and ‘ending up’ in aged care, which is often disparagingly referred to as ‘a last resort and fate worse than death’ (Chivers and Kriebernegg 2018, 26). And, in part due to entrenched ageism, the daily experience of our oldest and most vulnerable citizens inside aged care facilities is something many of us know little about, with their lives and experience often quite invisible (Miller 2021).

The reality is that the challenges facing the aged care sector, both in Australia and internationally, are significant: attracting, recruiting, and sustaining a quality workforce is difficult, with many professionals reluctant to work in aged care. While caring for physically frail and cognitively impaired older people can be a rewarding activity, it is often also challenging: the diverse aged care workforce must deal with issues of care relationships, ageing, technology, dying and death while managing heavy workloads, limited career pathways, under-resourcing, insufficient training, poor staff morale, and a reputation for routine, monotonous care tasks (Hales and Riach 2017; Hodgkin et al. 2017; Miller 2021).

One way of improving the lives of people living in aged care – and also helping to make the care delivery experience more enjoyable for staff – is through the use of technology-based activities. Emerging technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, and more established social technologies, such as video conferencing tools, have the power to connect people living in aged care to the outside world, providing social and emotional enrichment for people whose lives are often constrained by mobility impairments and the organizational structures of aged care. In recent years, providers have slowly begun to introduce technology-based activities into leisure programmes, including immersive virtual reality, which provides residents with the opportunity to experience ‘travelling’ to other places and encountering new worlds (Baker et al. 2020).

While VR can offer an engaging and individualized experience, most care facilities and staff are unfamiliar with the potential of VR technologies to improve residents’ quality of life. The broader research project deployed multiple arts-based research methods (e.g. digital stories, participatory photography, drawing, cartoons) to document and widely disseminate the transformative impact of using VR in aged care – with the ethnodrama one element.² VR was implemented in 3 aged care homes in South-East Queensland, Australia, with fifteen residents and seven staff engaging in up to four VR sessions facilitated by the research team. The research team supported staff to run VR-based leisure activities over a period of two months and, aware that organizational culture often determines if a new initiative is sustained, monitored if and how the care facilities continued with the VR activities once the researchers left.

Crafting the playscript/ethnodrama – project origins and the creative process

A playwright³ was commissioned to creatively craft a research-based script on this project. This theatre component was inspired, in part, by the work of Alan Hopgood (2013), who has created numerous plays on diverse medical issues including dementia, prostate cancer, bullying, communication, and aged care. Having experienced the transformative power of watching a Hopgood play focussed on aged care⁴ at a conference, the lead project researcher (EM) was inspired to attempt something similar: a series of plays on VR in aged care, that might be presented in a conference setting to engage, educate, and inspire aged care providers to experiment with this novel technology.

Having decided on the play form, the researchers made contact with the playwright (CL) to discuss the project. CL, who had previous experience in the community and cultural development space, was not aware of such partnerships in academia but was immediately intrigued. And so began a collaboration and multiple in-depth discussions about the purpose and audience for these plays, the key messages and desired tone, the length, performers, and structure, as well as questions around creative freedom versus research accuracy. The key brief was that the plays needed to be presentable in a conference setting, last no longer than twenty minutes, and convey to different stakeholders (residents, staff, families) the potential impact of VR. Working within these guidelines was challenging, yet ultimately rewarding – for as Lea (2012) notes, such parameters ‘provide a structure that can be simultaneously confining and creative and have a significant impact on the final production’ (66).

Indeed, as theatre maker and academic Johnny Saldaña note, the playwright’s task is ‘a data analytic process’ (1998, 184), of reviewing ‘interviews, participant observation, field notes, journal entries and/or print and media artifacts’ (2005, 2). The playwright’s research and development approach was fourfold, involving: conversations with participants in the study and those supporting them; observing participants engaging with VR technology; experiencing VR himself; and reviewing depictions of aged care – in theatre and other media.

Having met with significant stakeholders and spoken with them directly, CL suggested that a series of monologues might convey the experience more richly than traditional scenes relying on multiple actors. It might also read better ‘off the page’ for those unable to attend a performance. It was hoped the series might so prove nimbler, and more approachable, requiring less actors to stage and less of audiences more familiar with speeches in a conference setting. By focusing on a single voice and experience, each work could do away with the need for props and set, reframing the performance as a face-to-face meeting between actor and audience as a simple act of storytelling. The monologue format was also inspired by the findings of psychologist, Vygotsky (2004).

Vygotsky reasons that we can imaginatively extend our own experience by attending to representations of the experiences of others: ‘it becomes the means by which a person’s experienced is broadened, because he can imagine what he has not seen, can conceptualise something from another person’s narration and description of what himself has never experienced’ (17). This empathic bond is the basis of imagination and by allowing audiences to imagine the experience of those in aged care, as well as those around them, it was hoped each work might provoke new insights and understanding. Vygotsky calls this a double, mutual dependence: ‘If, in the first case, imagination is based on experience, in the second case, experience itself is based on imagination’ (Ibid.).

The playwright created three playscripts. All are fictional, but they are inspired by the research and designed to stimulate reflection and discussion about the current experience of aged care and the potential for new technology to enhance the quality of life. In developing this play series, ultimately named Transcendence, the playwright built on several meaningful moments he and the research team observed to create three separate monologues, each addressing a different stakeholder point of view (POV): aged care residents; nurses, carers, and support staff; or family members. Before describing each of these plays, a note on the project findings. While the outcomes are not yet published, the research found that staff and residents greatly enjoyed the VR experiences, with residents very quick to adapt to the immersive environments and gain confidence in using the hand-controllers. As a gradual introduction to immersive technology, residents hot air ballooned over the Swiss Alps or a Kenyan safari using Alcove VR, and were all surprised with how ‘real it felt’. Rebecca, for example, said: "I have been to Africa!", while in another session, Rita grabbed Dennis’ arm (thinking he was an African buffalo) explaining that "I thought I could touch it … seemed so close! It's unreal!". While the VR experience was enjoyable, the technological logistics (for example, connected devices to the local Wi-Fi network often proved problematic) and staffing challenges meant the sustainability of the VR initiative after the research project ended was in some facilities was in doubt as running VR activities ‘pulls staff off the floor’. Having (1) a supportive senior management, willing to invest in purchasing the technology and allocating staff time for implementation and (2) a staff champion, interested in experimenting with VR, was required for the intervention to become standard practice (see Miller 2021, for a detailed discussion on the challenges of sustaining diverse and interesting leisure activities in aged care).

A play could have documented these experiences, and in fact could have used the exact words of participants, as we see in research poetry – which creates poem-like prose from found text, such as interview transcripts (see, for example Miller 2021); in this context, however, to craft the emotive impact needed, combining research with creative writing was the chosen approach – and indeed, it is rare for RbT to use the exact words of participants. Rather, RbT explores, in emotive, embodied ways, the issues and themes raised by the research – and that is the unique value of this form of embodied writing. Rather than sharing the actual words and voices in a dramatized form (which is one option, seen in research poetry), these plays purposely take a more creative lens to enable people to truly imagine the potential of this technology in this unique context. Additionally, unlike plays which are about, for example, illnesses or dementia, being able to create an engaging play about VR in aged care needed the imagination offered by embodied writing – so rather than a straight-forward story about how Rebecca enjoyed a virtual trip to Africa, the chosen deeply embodied approach is designed to intentionally get ‘under your skin’ (p11; Jaramillo et al. 2023), transporting the reader into an unusually deep journey into the diverse lives of people living, working in, and visiting aged care, and how VR – at its very best – has the potential to impact these relationships. Such embodied writing, as Boncori and Smith (2019) observe, introduces more insightful – and memorable – understandings of organizational realities. The three playscripts/ethnodramas

The first play, Life on Mars, took the POV of aged-care residents and explored the theme of autonomy – telling the story of Frankie, a former pilot now grounded with Parkinson’s, who takes to the skies once again via the use of VR. The second play, One Last Swim Before the Sun Sets, explored the theme of connection and took the POV of nurses, carers, and support staff, telling how a young carer, Eddie helps a palliative resident, Allegra, realize a lifelong ambition to swim with the dolphins by immersing her in water with a pair of VR goggles.

The third play, After Aleppo, is shared below. After Aleppo takes the POV of family and the theme of care, where a daughter is reunited with her fading father inside a virtual memorial to the city they once called home. In After Aleppo, Aleea and her daughter are visiting her father, Sharif, a former merchant at the Aleppo souk in Syria. Like the grand market itself, which now lies in ruins, Sharif’s memories are crumbling. Desperate to forge some connection between father and granddaughter, Aleea arranges for the three to revisit the souk using virtual reality (VR) technology, triggering a moment of recognition and reconnection.

After Aleppo

ALEEA  Tablet off.

   … 

  Zahra, now!

Pull into the car park. Seatbelt off. Grab the bag.

ALEEA  Come on, we’re going to be late.

I know she hates coming here. Tries to duck it each week, pleading headache or homework, but it’s important.

ALEEA  Hurry! Baba will be waiting.

Catch her smirk and my heart collapses.

Bite my lip.

see the shame in her eyes

ALEEA  It’s okay.

   Pass me the bag.

           ***

I remember as a girl in Aleppo, him lifting me in his arms, spinning me around until I’d beg him to stop. And then he’d wink and I’d shriek, as he spun me round again, until I was dizzy with joy.

Baba was a spice merchant at the Al-Madina souk. It spread like a maze throughout the old city, filling its cracks, spilling out of alleys into plazas; over twelve square kilometres of food and music and laughter under brightly coloured awnings; a place to get lost in. And Baba’s shop was the busiest of them all. I’d spend whole days crawling amongst bulging sacks of peppers, sumac and spearmint, spilling a thousand bright colours – listening to dad laughing, then bartering, then laughing – the air heady with scent.

           ***

Up the steps

bag swinging

jars clinking

then the door

check in with QR code

press the buzzer

then wait

Zahra looks at me, eyes worried.

Last time he scared her, I know.

I should have warned her

what he’s like now

I forget

how much is gone.

ALEEA  We won’t stay long.

Poor thing

She’s being so brave.

Turn to tell her

then the door unlocks

squeeze her hand

and pull her inside.

           ***

My first day at school

Here in Australia

Everything so different

I remember clutching dad’s hand

And Baba, kneeling beside me,

whispering – It’s okay, Aleea.

Him, who’d lost everything.

Here, you can be anything.

You just have to be brave.

           ***

ALEEA  I’m here to see Baba.

  Sorry.

  Sharif El Din.

  Doctor Lim is expecting us.

  Aleea.

  I’m his daughter.

  And this is Zahra

           ***

After Aleppo

When we first came to Melbourne

And all we had now were memories.

But there was kindness too

People donated furniture

A man helped dad find a job.

Not in sales

Not yet with his English

In a factory

He smelled different then.

sharper

less vivid

But on Saturdays

We’d go to the Victoria markets

That was his favourite day of the week

Mine too.

Watching him haggle over a lettuce

or barter down the cost on a DVD.

Baba was in his element.

It wasn’t home

Not like before

But some days it felt close.

He had this big booming laugh

It was embarrassing.

And now

I’d give anything to hear it

           ***

Turn left

down the corridor

then the second on the right

and we’re here.

Take a moment to compose myself

Check Zahra’s okay

Love that girl

Take a breath

Knock

Pull the door open

           ***

By the time I finished high school, Baba had started his own business

Importing spices and selling them to restaurants in the city.

It wasn't easy, but Baba was tenacious

By the time I finished uni, he had six staff

And by the time I got married, twelve

And just after Zahra was born, they had to move to bigger premises.

We used to visit him at work

Back then

he was unstoppable.

I know it doesn’t seem that way now,

but –

           ***

ALEEA  Hello Baba

He sits by the window.

ALEEA  How are you feeling?

Kiss his cheek. Hold him

ALEEA  Look, Zahra’s here as well.

He nods

But I can tell he doesn’t recognise us.

Poor baba we have lost you by degrees

Each day a little further away,

The eyes less bright,

The mind more distant.

Shake it off

It's the disease

Not him

Keep talking so Zahra won’t notice.

It was her tenth birthday when I first knew something was wrong.

Dad had always been forgetful.

Car keys

That sort of thing

But tonight

I watched him

try to cut his steak

with a spoon.

I thought he was joking with Zahra

The two of them always thick as thieves

But the look

on his face

And now Zahra’s nearly twelve

And Dad … .

ALEEA  Are you thirsty?

Pour the cup

Hold it up to his mouth

Dab his chin.

As Doctor Lim enters.

ALEEA  Hello Doctor.

    I brought Zahra as well, I hope that’s okay.

Of course, he smiles.

She can give me a hand setting up.

I watch him unpack the headsets, explaining to Zahra, how they work, and her eyes come alight. This she understands. I sit with dad by the window, holding his hand, and talking about the past, except it’s only me talking, because Baba’s already there.

Look up at Zahra laughing as she tries on a headset.

And almost miss the smile on baba’s face

so there’s something.

I wish she could see him

like I do.

I mean the man he was.

because our past is our story

but each time we come to visit

another page is torn out.

The disease takes everything

First Zahra,

then my wedding,

the business

All of it gone

Until all that’s left is Aleppo

Funny in a way.

Back in 2012, when the souk was destroyed

Dad wept for days

But since then, he’s forgotten

And Aleppo still stands

           ***

Doctor Lim approaches with a headset.

He’s explained before

how it works

But Dad won’t remember

We’re going to use this

to go on a trip

he says

I thought you might like to come.

Baba nods.

And Dr Lim helps him put it on

When we talked on the phone,

he tried to explain it to me,

what it was,

how it would work.

But he needed my permission

he said

To take Baba home.

I said I’d like to come too.

But first

I have an idea

           ***

Dad and I wait

As Doctor Lim synchs the headsets

And Zahra takes out the jars,

Like I showed her

First the chilli

Then smoked paprika

cumin

and coriander seeds

sea salt

and garlic

Grinding them down

Like we practiced

The sound

of the mortar and pestle

and the smell

of Harissa

Breath in deep

as Dad’s grip

tightens in my own

It’s dark.

Can’t see

anything

I think maybe it’s not working

About to tell Doctor Lim

then

Is that?

Candles?

No

Arabian lanterns,

I forgot how pretty

And then

a ray of sunlight

slips in

through the awnings.

Illuminating everything

And I hear my father gasp.

ALEEA Baba?

Can you see it?

Do you know how many photos were taken just last year?

Over a trillion

That’s a million, million memories.

And Doctor Lim explained

What this company had done

Is trawl through thousands of photographs on Instragram.

All the ones of Al Madina

Downloading them

Sorting them

Compiling them

To rebuild what’s been lost.

BABA Aleppo.

He’s shaking now.

ALEEA Yes Baba.

And we both start to cry.

Because It’s home

Just as we left it

A gift

of something thought lost.

ZAHRA It looks amazing, Mum!

She’s watching on the tablet.

And then –

BABA Zahra?

And she says

ZAHRA Hello, Baba.

And he asks

BABA What are you doing here?

And she smiles.

I hear it in her voice.

And says,

ZAHRA We’ve come to see you at work.

And the room shakes with his great booming laugh.

           ****

----------------

The embodied experience of After Aleppo

Reading, writing and experimenting with this play script shows the potential of using research-based theatre in multiple different organizational contexts, to foster engagement, education, reflexivity, discovery, and transformation amongst audiences. As After Aleppo so powerfully demonstrates, creative embodied writing helps others see, imagine, and better understand the experiences of others in a memorable and transformative manner. Anderson (2001) identified seven key features of embodied writing: (1) true-to-life, vivid depictions intended to invite sympathetic resonance; (2) internal and external data as essential to relaying the experience; (3) written from the inside out; (4) richly concrete and specific, descriptive of all sensory modalities, and often slowed down to capture nuance; (5) attuned to the living body; (6) includes narrative embedded in experience; and (7) poetic images, literary style, and cadence serve embodied depictions (Anderson, 2001, p. 87–88). Each of these features is clearly present in After Aleepo; this play script is so vividly descriptive that readers could close their eyes to feel and imagine being in the souk, with Sharif – this is the transformative power of embodied writing.

In fact, After Aleppo was partly inspired by an experience documented by the research team wherein, one of the residents, after donning a VR headset, was able to return to his former home in Norway and explore its streets. Cued by familiar sights, he became more animated, reminiscing on his past, joking with others, and relating long forgotten stories from childhood.

After reading more on dementia and the way it ravages memory, the playwright was interested in the notion of vanishing histories, which led to the story of the Aleppo souk. The market, once the largest in the world, endured for five thousand years until it was razed during Syria’s civil war. Yet archaeologists, with the help of a vast crowdsourced effort, were able to reconstruct the souk from thousands of photographs as a virtual monument to the past and human capability.

The story, which is related by Aleea, recounts her father’s battle with dementia and his retreat into memories of a life now lost forever. Sacks (2011) writes: ‘if a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye, but if he has lost a self – himself – he cannot know it, because he is not there to know it’ (35). Like the souk itself, Aleea’s father’s mind lies in ruins; yet in After Aleppo, Aleaa finds a way to briefly recover something precious long thought lost, reuniting with her dad – if only fleetingly. Perhaps, in doing so, the play acknowledges a truth, first suggested by Luria, and acknowledged by Sacks that in all things, ‘there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communication, by touching the human spirit’ (38).

Conclusion

In closing, embodied writing – such as ethnodrama – offers much to organizational scholars, who are often seeking ways to engage, educate, and transform. As Anderson (2001) notes, traditional academic writing tends to be distanced, disembodied, dull, and drear; in contrast, embodied writing, is often emotive and always engages. In a novel, engaging, and moving manner, After Aleppo enhances our understanding of aged care, primarily from the perspective of family members, showing the pain and joy of remembering and forgetting, and the potential of technology to transform the experience of aged care. At the time of writing, only one play has been publicly performed – although all have been recorded as short videos, for public use⁵, with embodied writing and research-based theatre is an important strategy for tackling reducing the invisibility of older aged care residents in our public discourse (see Miller 2021).

Embodied writing challenges organizational scholars to think differently about the design and dissemination of research (see Boncori and Smith 2019). This paper has outlined the potential of ethnodrama in knowledge translation, however, there are many other different forms of embodied writing that we could have experimented with – for example, others have written autoethnographic accounts of miscarriage (Boncori and Smith 2019) and expressing breast milk in the workplace (van Amsterdam 2015), diary notes mourning the pandemic (Mandalaki 2022), and multi-layered drawing and prose – originating from a reading circle – which merged into a composition (Jaramillo et al. 2023), as well as using ‘dialogical writing’, drawing on literature and fieldwork about a family business, to inquire, feel, listen and connect differently during research (Helin 2019). Writing differently, as Phillips, Pullen, and Rhodes (2013) note, enables us to ‘shape the world anew’ (9). That has been our aim here, for very few of us spend much time thinking about the embodided, lived experience of aged care, from the perspective of residents, their families, and, of course, carers. Our ethnodrama enabled unqiue insight into the potential of VR – but it also highlighted interpersonal relationships, personal histories, and the experience of illness, and much, much more! Even the interactions between Aleea and her daughter Zahra hint at broader socio-cultural issues (technology use, family relationships, and intergenerational interactions): specifically, the play starts with Aleea instructing her to turn her tablet off, and we can see that Zahra does not really enjoy / see the value of visiting her grandfather in aged care – and it is the introduction of VR that finally enables a meaningful connection, to each other and to the past. While we crafted a playscript as our form of embodied writing, it is interesting to also imagine how autoethographic reflections, research poetry, photograhy or perhaps dialogical writing itself might have presented this experience differently – and indeed that is a task for future research.

While our focus has been on the unique organizational context of care, and the importance for thinking 'with' the organization/ organizing of aged care and the potential of technology to enable family and intergenerational connections, adapting to change is feature of contemporary work. Indeed, over fifty years ago now, Toffler (1970) astutely noted that the illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. We believe that embodied writing, such as ethnodrama, provide a uniquely powerful way to engage and educate the workforce about change initiatives, and triggering the critical processes of learning, unlearning, and relearning – in this case, educating the aged care workforce – as well as older residents, their families, and the general public – to think about the potential of technology to enhance resident’s quality of life.

Acknowledgements

Aspects of this research was funded by Meta/Facebook, under a philanthropy grant to Evonne Miller, Glenda Caldwell, Jenny Waycott, Raelene Wilding, Steven Baker, and Barbara Barbosa Neves, to develop an online toolkit documenting how best to deploy VR into aged care. The funding body did not influence project design or reporting. We acknowledge and thank the broader project team, including Abbe Winter, Leonie Sanderson, Simon Lowe. Alan Burden, and Anthony Franze for assistance with the project and data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Facebook [grant number 2021].

Notes

1 This research project was approved by QUT Human Research Ethics Committee (#4216).

2 Find project details and toolkit here: https://research.qut.edu.au/designlab/projects/transforming-aged-care-with-virtual-reality-vr/

3 The first author, CL.

4 The play was, Do you know me?, which aims to improving communication between staff and residents by illustrating that every person has a story to tell. Watch some here: https://healthplay.com.au/do-you-know-me/

5 COVID has meant planned performances have been rescheduled three times, with One Last Swim Before the Sun Sets performed in May 2022 at The Big Anxiety Festival in Brisbane, Australia. All are digitally recorded and available as a free resource at: https://research.qut.edu.au/agedcarevr/resources/