Performance practice as research, learning and teaching

ABSTRACT

This article considers how the performing arts integrate with research, learning and teaching. In doing so, it addresses the relation between research and performance practice, and the connections between research/practice with learning and teaching. Reference to A/R/Tography is made as a constructivist praxis facilitating integration of these pedagogic and creative activities. The discussion extends from performance education and how it is assessed in terms of teaching and research quality to consideration of how performance practice may be applied in diverse educational, social and professional contexts. Performance practice is shown to integrate learning and teaching in a holistic process. It also supports reflexivity as a basis for learning and cognitive development. Reference is made to specific examples of performance pedagogy and applied performance practice to demonstrate how this creative approach supports learning in educational and social contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• A/R/Tography
• performance
• practice
• teaching
• learning
• research

Introduction

How can the performing arts integrate with research, learning and teaching? Within this discipline area research relates to creative practice, although how this works is not always fully understood in higher education institutions. Magi and Beerkens note that in the university environment there is great pressure on staff to be research active, but this begs the question of whether this ‘offers a better learning experience for students’ (2016, 241). In what follows, I review practice in the performing and creative arts, with specific reference to A/R/Tography as a constructivist praxis focussed on creative practice, research, learning and teaching; as such, it offers a strategy for how these activities may be integrated fruitfully. The exploration of these connections rests on the premise that blurring the boundaries between creative and pedagogic activities is rewarding for both academics and students and offers a practical approach to the systemic problem of being asked to do more with less time. It also allows creative practitioners to progress their own work through their teaching rather than despite it, ideally resulting in a virtuous circle of creative practice, research, learning and teaching.

My discussion extends from the current experience of performance education to a consideration of how performance practice may be applied in diverse educational, social and professional contexts to enhance and integrate teaching, learning, research and creativity, supporting reflexive cognitive development. This begins with reference to the Scottish context of higher education and extends to international relevance. Insights relating to how we teach performance as a form of creative inquiry can be applied to the question of how to use performance itself as a playful and constructivist strategy to enhance the teaching of diverse subjects and students. These questions are particularly urgent in the present context of Covid when teaching across all subject areas has gone wholly online or delivered using a blended approach, and lecturers are looking for new ways to communicate with students who are less engaged by a digital learning experience. Further, Covid has led to acute crisis in the performing arts industry, and funding for arts education is under threat, so it is more important than ever to think deeply about how we facilitate performance practice in higher education and to declare its vital role in supporting understanding and knowledge across a range of disciplines and learning situations.

Performance practice as research, teaching and learning

The integration of learning, teaching and research in creative practice is beneficial for tutors and students alike, but there is a lot of variation in how this is viewed and implemented. In a Scottish context, the attempt to establish a shared paradigm of practice across the creative and performing arts gained momentum through the identification of research, teaching and learning linkages as an enhancement theme for the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education in 2008. As part of this initiative, Glasgow School of Art hosted an event exploring what research, teaching and learning linkages mean in the context of creative and cultural practice and the resulting report clearly identifies that, ‘fluidity and diversity is […] intrinsic’ to creative arts disciplines (Neil 2010). Across art, drama and music broadly, ‘making’ is closely associated with research and learning through creative inquiry, and the report uses language that resonates with current expressions of A/R/Tography, where creative practice, research and teaching are seen to be mutually informative (Springgay 2008).

Lisa Given usefully states that, ‘A/r/tography is an arts and education practice-based methodology recognizing that the practices of artists and educators are often reflective, reflexive, recursive, and responsive acts of living inquiry’ (2008, 27); this infers that the creative process becomes synonymous with learning outcome, rather than being below it in a hierarchy of cognitive processes. That outcome may be an assessed piece of critical work or a practical performance produced by the student, but neither of these is produced in a linear fashion, but the result of reflection and revision. Getting lost in the woods of creative practice and research is essential to reach the end destination. This is where performance research is not only practice led but, significantly, practice based, where ‘the creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge’ (Candy 2006). Although definitions of what constitutes research in the performing arts have evolved significantly in recent years, how this research connects with teaching and learning processes has had a lower profile. The dynamic between learner and teacher simultaneously engaged in creative praxis, the embodiment of theory in practice, is a recognised feature of constructivist pedagogy. This is where theory meets lived experience resulting in holistic understanding rooted in observation and experience. As Ord and Nutall comment with reference to teacher training: ‘the world of human activity is discursive, conflicted, and richer than most theory or formal knowledge can allow for, simply because such theories cannot reckon with the way in which the learner’s felt experience comes to the fore when she/he begins to ‘apply’ her/his knowledge’ (2016, 357; Kear 2011, 11). In the world of performing arts, this idea needs to be considered in the context of creative performance practice as research for us to enhance understanding of how knowledge and skills develop in this subject area. As a research method, A/R/Tography allows for this fusion of academic knowledge and personal experience, leading to reflection, revision and repositioning: a dynamic, discursive process essential for both creativity and learning.

During the 2008 event at Glasgow School of Art Professor Alan Jenkins commented that, ‘part of the dissemination of definitions of research must be the studio work of students themselves – an underused resource’ (Neil 2010), indicating an assumption of the time that research is driven by teaching academics and learning is the job of students, a distinction that works against the principles underpinning creative inquiry, such as empowerment of participants, collaborative experimentation, contextual relevance and ethical orientation. As an evolving praxis, A/R/Tography actively supports the notion of the creative arts as dynamic and open, where process is integrated with findings and not driven by pre-determined and limited learning outcomes used to audit student progress, or as Nelson puts it, it is ‘research inquiry based in practice’ (Barney 2019; Nelson 2013, 6). The skilful educator should aim to construct learning outcomes that recognise the process as well as results. Professor Jenkins’ observation gestures towards a need to counter a prevailing yet outmoded liberal humanist assumption that knowledge is perfected and completed over time: as such, it rests in the domain of the teacher who has already spent time acquiring it and will become available to the student once they have made a similar temporal investment. There is a teleological basis to this view of practice, research, teaching and learning, which is undone when we remember that teaching ‘is like a research laboratory: you give courses on what you are investigating, not on what you know’ (Deleuze 1995, 139). Deleuze reminds us that teaching is not a closed, unidirectional process but creates knowledge(s) through creative, open inquiry. The metaphor of the rhizome developed by Deleuze and Guattari to describe how culture and knowledge propagate has been profoundly influential for A/R/Tography, as Irwin and Springgay explain,

the rhizome operates by variation, perverse mutation, and flows of intensities that penetrate meaning, […] It is an interstitial space, open and vulnerable where meanings and understandings are interrogated and ruptured. Building on the concept of the rhizome, a/r/tography radically transforms the idea of theory as an abstract system. (2008, xx)

Such an approach openly acknowledges the socially constructed, creative nature of knowledge disseminated through education.

Performance praxis and learning outcomes

Deleuze’s perspective relates directly to a constructivist emphasis on students as co-producers of knowledge which holds sway in current pedagogical thinking, with its emphasis on collective, playful investigation (Kear 2011, 11). Nevertheless, this shift from outcome driven teaching practice to one focussed around critical and creative inquiry is problematic for some educators working in the field of the creative/performing arts as they feel it leaves them vulnerable to charges of insufficient knowledge or preparation required for successful teaching: it takes a certain amount of confidence for a young or less experienced tutor to admit to students that they may not have the answer to every question (Hennessy et al. 2021). Yet, through focussing on the process rather than the outcome teachers equip students with a skill set that can be applied to diverse and dynamic situations rather than prescribed outputs or knowledges that are limited in application. This means that teaching is a two-way process allowing lecturers to think out loud with students, testing assumptions generated through collective research, using the seminar or theatre studio as a laboratory for experimentation with ideas relating to performance. Such an approach teaches students not simply what to think but, more importantly, how to think, harnessing their own active investigation as the medium for learning and teaching.

Abandoning the assumption that tutors must have all the answers all of the time makes space for collective creative inquiry through experimental praxis. Baz Kershaw identifies performance praxis informed by ethical engagement as resulting in ‘productive instabilities’, where meaning is created; in this light, he posits performance research as an ‘anti-discipline’. This idea of performance as an anti-discipline indicates blurred epistemological boundaries as performance research is multi/inter/trans disciplinary, in that it combines diverse disciplines, generating performance through and between dialogue, continuing beyond different disciplines; it also entails a rejection of hierarchies of knowledge and authority in the context of learning and teaching and in the tutor/student relationship (Kershaw 2011, 3). In this way, performance praxis resonates with the laboratory of investigation identified by Deleuze and offers space for the performative embodiment of experience and ideas embraced by A/R/Tography. The ability to integrate diverse disciplines in a holistic process of teaching, learning and creative research leading to ‘productive instabilities’ is a particular strength of performance practice.

Academia and/or practice?

Viewing students as co-researchers has the additional advantage for the tutor who has been developing an independent research project, as it opens up the possibility of testing out hypotheses and approaches in the studio or class room and benefitting from multiple perspectives on the topic in question through student involvement. The tutor has an ethical responsibility to make students full participants in the creative inquiry rather than positioning them in a more passive role, where student contribution is a simple response to the tutor’s ideas. In turn, the students benefit from participating and learning through cutting-edge approaches to their field, meaning their learning is current and relevant in the wider sphere, which is essential for ensuring that students are industry ready or prepared for further advanced study. Whether the activity is tutor or student led, a community of inquiry is formed where the students should be excited and invested in a learning activity where they are making genuine contributions to knowledge, understanding and practice (Kear 2011, 11–13). This is, of course, the ideal, but there can be unseen dangers when tutors use their own practice as research to drive learning and teaching, in that students may not yet have acquired sufficient knowledge and experience to benefit from the ongoing investigation. It is the nature of advanced research/practice to be in depth and specialised, and this may not be compatible with student learning where foundational knowledge and skills need to be established. A counterbalance to this potential misalignment of research, practice, learning and teaching levels is provided through maintaining a focus on A/R/Tographic practice with its emphasis on inclusive and creative inquiry and through rethinking what we mean by research.

Universities encourage their teaching staff to be research active and produce outputs that can be audited: it is a persuasive demonstration that their academics are leading advances in knowledge and innovation, and it brings economic rewards as well as a status to individual researchers and to the institution. This can be problematic in the context of performance practice, which does not always equate to a conventional written research output. Often performance is considered in terms of ‘impact’, in terms of how it responds to its immediate communities, social environment, promotes accessibility to the arts and reflects ethnic diversity (Finneran and Anderson 2019, vi). This kind of impact can be written up and creative practice research usually involves critical analysis of a creative output – performance practice is not considered self-sufficient (Candy 2020, 238–239). This is the same scepticism directed towards A/R/Tography’s emphasis on creative improvisation as a basis for learning. The implication of this institutional framing is that performance as research is regarded as less than, or impossible without the framework of more conventional critical inquiry. In a university setting this can mean that the teaching of performance skills is implicitly devalued. Elkana and Klopper argue that an insistent emphasis on conventional research outputs undermines the quality of university based learning and teaching rather than enhancing it (2016, 156), and this controversial observation is certainly relevant to misconceptions of university performing arts education.

Despite the fact that creative practice research has been present within higher education institutions for some time, the infrastructure of such organisations pushes staff to identify themselves as either academics or creative practitioners: most obviously, teaching responsibilities reduce time available for individual creative practice. Elkana and Klopper remind us that we need to revise what research means and how it is applied in the context of learning. A lecturer who is involved in supporting students to develop performance projects and who keeps abreast of developments in the field may be said to be research active, although they may not necessarily produce independent research outputs that can be audited by the university and included as part of a submission to the UK Research Excellence Framework. This brings us back to the idea that in the context of student learning research is as much about how we approach our subject as it is about outputs to be counted. The introduction of the UK Teaching Excellence Framework should rebalance the relationship between university teaching and research, although its reliance on metric analysis supported by contextual evidence is less compatible with the discursive and practice based/led creative inquiry that distinguishes the performing arts (HM Gov 2017, 49). These methods of academic audit assess research or teaching quality, and while they demonstrate awareness of the connections between the two, they are not set up to support an integrated approach.

This structural inflexibility in assessing research and teaching quality connects with Elkana and Klopper’s view that the value placed on research undermines teaching, although the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework may be seen as an attempt to redress the balance. A/R/Tography helps us to push rethinking academic functions and priorities even further through avoiding the oppositional epistemological construct of research or practice. Revising how we think about those terms makes space for the ideal teaching and learning scenario: collective creative inquiry and practice.

It has to be admitted, though, that ideals can fall short in practice, and it is also the case that teaching based around the tutor’s personal practice can become esoteric and contribute to a programme of learning that lacks overall coherence. The danger here is that students do not build expertise from foundational skills but have an eclectic experience where skills and knowledge do not feed into each other in an upward trajectory. Foundational learning and practice elements are required to support students to develop their own research-based critical and creative inquiry, as well as learning informed by the tutor’s previous experience. Performance practice benefits from being explored through process rather than driven by already established research outputs. This is Kershaw’s ‘productive instabilities’ produced through the A/R/Tographic creative inquiry of performance, instead of a pedagogical instance of putting the cart before the horse, allowing assumed outcomes generated through advanced practice and research to dictate learning, therefore limiting the scope of a constructivist learning process.

Performance practice in social contexts

The capacity of performance practice to integrate learning, teaching and research can also be embedded in wider strategies ensuring that what we do within the institution is relevant and useful to the outside world in terms of social impact and knowledge exchange. Drama and performance are increasingly recognised as sustainable strategies to support health and well-being and part of a range of innovative complementary approaches for supporting healthcare professionals as well as patients/clients (Clod 2020; Hannah 2014). Vettraino, Linds and Jindal-Snape usefully summarise the advantages of using drama techniques to support individuals and communities, stating, ‘The arts, including creative drama, enable a dialogic dance to occur between mind and body; a socially constructed process that creates moments of insight that are both cognitively and physically experienced’ (2017, 81). ‘The dialogic dance’ so memorably described here offers an experience of embodied research incorporating learning and teaching, through the processes of observation, analysis and evaluation, ideally resulting in ‘moments of insight’. Practitioners working with applied drama in the context of health care recognise that drama can help individuals harness the imagination to envisage and embody compassion for the self and others, leading to long term change: The Clod Ensemble based in London employ drama exercises in their Performing Medicine workshops, supporting clinicians to communicate effectively and compassionately with patients in their care. More widely, the combined critical and phenomenological processes of drama are seen to have positive impacts on confidence and self-expression. In this arena, the concept of integrated research, practice, learning and teaching shifts from the critical investigation of academic topics to one where understanding of the subject and its contexts can lead to embodied research, learning and teaching through practice, enhancing understanding about the self in relationship with others.

The deployment of applied drama practice as embodied research requires skilful and experienced practitioners alert to the distinct circumstances of the client group they are working with. Just because a tutor believes that performance practice can generate positive ‘moments of insight’ for participants does not mean that the intended client group they are working with will do as well. A common occurrence for those running drama workshops for diverse client groups is that initial interest is followed by a lack of involvement. In such an instance, it would be reasonable to assume that the intended participants felt the workshops were not sufficiently relevant or beneficial to merit the investment of time and personal input. This is an ever-present cul de sac of applied drama, where it is reduced to a practice done to a client group rather than with them. Drama practice of this sort is visited on communities in a top-down fashion, by well-meaning but often patronising professionals who believe that they hold the key to social improvement. In the language of research, teaching and learning linkages, we are back in the world where instructors do research and then demonstrate the results to their passive student audience. This is the difference between drama in education and theatre in education, a practice chiming with the values of A/R/Tography, using drama techniques to work with young people on topics of relevance to them, rather than offering a more passive experience of drama as spectacle (Wooster 2016).

This faultline in applied drama practice reaches back to the earliest efforts in the field and forward well into the twenty-first century. One practitioner working in the Netherlands and reflecting on the applied community performance projects she was involved in in the 1970s comments: ‘During that period we, as intellectuals, were so busy doing all the thinking for the community residents, that we had no idea of the kind of power that could actually come out of these people themselves’ (Boeurs and Van der Hoek 2000, 10; quoted in Van Erven 2000, 56). Such a comment shows highly developed reflexivity, and we could dismiss the problem diagnosed as symptomatic of a less evolved approach to applied performance. Nevertheless, much more recently, Charlotte McIvor notes that in response to the current refugee crisis, contemporary theatre ‘approaches to “new interculturalism” do not always encompass the study of performance by/for/with/about those from backgrounds of forced migration’ (2019, 231). It appears that despite the ‘social turn’ in performance making theatre practitioners still find it easier to think for those they are attempting to represent rather than to engage in performance-based dialectic.

By contrast, Vettraino, Linds and Jindal-Snape describe drama workshops with marginalised indigenous youth in Canada where embodied research is rooted in the community to a much greater extent. The workshops were delivered in a High School setting, making them part of a broader educational programme, and focussed on the strengths of the participants rather than deficits in ways which resonate with developing strategies for compassionate health care (Hannah 2014). The workshops were based on principles of ‘holism and relationality’ and underpinned by the principle that ‘artistic endeavours are recognised as parts of life that promote and sustain health and wellness’ (Vettraino, Linds, and Jindal-Snape 2017, 84). The workshops were constructed following Boal’s ‘Forum Theatre’ process and supported by the active participation of a community leader, who spoke about the values of the indigenous community, which were then incorporated into the workshops.¹ This instance of applied and community theatre practice offers a useful exemplar of how to avoid the common pitfalls associated with it. Chiming with the principles of A/R/Tography, it demonstrates rethinking the implicit hierarchy of drama practitioners instructing and co-ordinating a project with passive participants, and the value of embedding the activities into cultural and educational contexts. This approach achieves an embodied version of teaching and learning through practice and research to a much greater extent.

Performance practice in educational contexts

Performance techniques can be applied to facilitate learning across all topics and disciplines with a wide range of learners and offer a research strategy for investigating cognitive development. Andersen (2004) links theatre in education with psychology and constructivist pedagogy, citing Piaget and Vygotsky . Role play is shown to support ‘metacognition’, a reflexive process that chimes with the ‘moments of insight’ referred to by Vettraino et al. Drama workshops allow for simulated situated learning to take place where connections are made between learning and life outside the educational institution, where ‘life’ generates the material to be researched and considered, so that learning and teaching is rooted in experience and expressed through performance rather than being an abstract hypothesis.

Anderson recounts an example where elementary school pupils in America framed their learning about snails through role play, when they took on the roles of expert professors of Zoology, with the teacher performing the character of a zoo keeper who requires to consult the professors about how to care for the animals. Here the teacher is in a supporting rather than a leading role and Anderson describes this pedagogical approach as ‘inquiry + drama’ and it is clearly informed by Dorothy Heathcote’s pioneering ‘Mantle of the Expert’ approach to theatre in education (Heathcote and Herbert 1985). Anderson notes that the pupils engaged in this activity achieved better across several measures of learning compared to pupils learning about animals in a more conventional way. Reasons are not offered as to why this might be the case, although we can speculate that the role playing encouraged the pupils to bring an expert level of attention to the topic studied. The direction of this type of role play can be reversed, where professionals are invited to take on the relational positions of their client group, and consider the nature of their professional roles, and how these may be managed in conjunction with personal identities. The value of creative, collective improvisation is also recognised by practitioners working with A/R/Tography. Using performance practice to facilitate learning provides a vehicle for the evaluation of the self in relationship with others, as well as active engagement of imagination.

Performance practice and professional reflexivity

A further example of performance practice enabling personal and/or professional development through enhanced reflexivity is provided by Christine Kolaiti’s research, where photography is a medium for renarration of self in relationship to others: she worked with medical students who produced a series of photographs visually representing their interest in health care and patients or their own mental health issues (Kolaiti 2010). An early stage of this project involved inviting children to share ‘stories about their favourite toys: how they received them, how they played with them, what happened to them over years of use’ (55). This photographic renarration of self is essentially performative, as participants select the story they wish to tell about themselves through their relationship with objects; it is a constructed narrative of subjectivity that encourages reflection. The second stage of this project may be said to have included a form of performative role play as students were invited to consider their professional responsibilities in the light of their personal identities as a way of promoting empathy and connection with their patients. This involved ‘staged’ self-portraits, where the photographic subject is also the artist, selecting the props, environment and physical posture to tell a story about the self in the style of a tableau. The performance of self allows for reflexivity, which Kolaiti argues is the basis for professional compassion and empathy. In a sense, this is the shedding of ‘the mantle of the expert’ to consider the person beneath it, involving reflective ‘de-roling’ at the same time as curating a non-expert version of the self. When so much value is placed on professional skills and attributes, this may seem to be a risky thing to do, and as such resonates with Springgay’s definition of A/R/Tography already quoted, as ‘an interstitial space, open and vulnerable where meanings and understandings are interrogated and ruptured’. Integrating the personal with the professional, however, helps to maintain compassion and empathy in busy settings where professionals can become desensitised.

The dramatic, reflexive performance of self as an essential tool for personal and professional self-development has been pioneered by the Clod Ensemble over the last twenty years, through drawing on performance practice to support medical professionals, premised on the understanding that ‘the medical consultation, like a performance, is a live event’ and students are taught how ‘to keep rediscovering not just what or who they are looking at, but how they are looking’ (Willson 2014, 31). This act of rediscovery also requires investigation of the self in relationship with others, and awareness of the performance of expertise in the context of empathy and compassion, leading to enhanced communication and understanding of the subject, both human and academic. In the case of the elementary school professors and Kolaiti’s medical photographers, embodied performance praxis underpins teaching and learning, and the research process is synonymous with the outcomes. The well-known problem of ‘burn out’ in medical professionals suggests that the ‘mantle of the expert’ can be experienced as a burden, so in addition to rethinking how those roles function, reflexivity through performance can assist clinicians to construct and inhabit such roles and, crucially, help them to de-role from them.

Following on from Kolaiti and The Clod Ensemble, techniques used to teach drama and the performance of narrative in universities and drama schools may be used to support medical students and staff. This involves an embodied, constructivist approach to inquiry-led research. Through performance workshops focussed on characterisation and the construction of contextual narratives, students are enabled to consider their physicality, listening skills, teamwork, resilience, voice skills and so on, and to apply these metacognitive insights in a professional situation. The next stage of this process is the deconstruction of these layered roles through the expression of aspects of themselves not obviously encompassed by the identity previously created. Hannah (2014), Willson (2014) and Kolaiti (2010) use performance and narrative to introduce compassion into the medical setting but do not address the very real danger of compassion fatigue. The performance strategies outlined here are designed to help stressed professionals step away from the pressures of their public roles, promoting sustainable professional practice and behaviour. These ‘de-roling’ performance techniques are as valuable as those facilitating a more empathetic connection with others and have application across a range of disciplines and professions.

Stanislavski’s continuing influence in the teaching of performance techniques has ensured that creating a character role is a key aspect of theatre performance, enhanced through interaction with others as well as through the use of language and physical gesture (2013); in a professional setting, it calls for the suppression of certain aspects of personality which may not be seen as compatible with professional responsibilities. Nevertheless, as Kolaiti’s work with medical students on photographic re-narration of self demonstrates, human beings experience an emotional need to express a whole sense of self, who is both the ‘professional’ and an individual (2010). The ‘de-roling’ techniques alluded to above have the potential to support this more integrated sense self, and to demarcate space for the ‘non-professional’ self.

Michael Chekov’s ideas about ‘the psychological gesture’ as well as Stanislavski’s ‘Circles of Attention’ can be used to help students with the process of empathetic connection with others and provide physical strategies for disconnecting when required (Merlin 2014; Chekhov 2014). ‘Psychological gesture’ involves the embodied narration of character as the actor is required to reproduce the physical qualities of the character represented and then attend to the state of mind and emotion this stimulates. Such an apparently simple approach to performance, beginning with physical mimicry, can lead to a profound connection with character and develop into compassion for others; at its most fully realised, it can work ‘to heal the artificial divide between body and soul’ (Carraciolo 2008, 11). This profound connection between self and others allows for further focus on the relation between the personal and professional self, and is enhanced through the ‘Circles of Attention’ exercise, which promotes reflection on the connections between the self and wider environment.² These exercises, and others like them, can be used by educators wishing to embed the principles of A/R/Tography into their teaching practice, as they allow for the creative imagination to connect up lived experience with immediate reality, creating those ‘interstitial spaces’ for moments of insight. Combined, these exercises and approaches facilitate an advanced reflexivity relating to how different environments call on different versions of the self, and how these potentially conflicting roles may be negotiated, separated or integrated as required in professional or personal contexts. The ‘dialogic dance’ between body and mind as described by Vettraino et al. is suggested here; and in the context of embodied performance practice and learning, the imagination engages in enhanced self-reflexivity to foster empathy in the course of professional responsibilities and to support withdrawal from these when appropriate and necessary. Stanislavski famously asserts the need for the actor to develop emotion memory to create verisimilitude in performance and that the professional must also be able to turn this off, to leave the ‘dirty boots at the door’ (Merlin 2014, 47). For the actor and medical professional, a form of embodied learning through performance practice informed by A/R/Tography can lead to enhanced reflexivity, providing the tools for professional engagement and detachment, leading to sustainable compassion in practice.

Conclusion

Reviewing performance practice as a platform for research, teaching and learning entails a high level of reflexivity regarding what we do in higher education institutions and how we do it. The approaches to performance pedagogy and the application of performance processes in broader contexts described here stems from a perspective informed by university rather than conservatoire style training, which perhaps accounts for my sense of needing to show how performance practice functions as critical inquiry drawing on the principles of A/R/Tography. Furthermore, as this article has sought to undo the binary of research or teaching, and even that of student or lecturer, I also seek to deconstruct the false binary of critical or creative. Just as performance has been championed as a valid form of critical inquiry housed within universities, we should also be more transparent about the contingent and performative nature of the knowledges produced elsewhere. Thinking about the way in which research, learning and teaching is embedded in performance practice is hugely demanding as it requires a dynamic integration of cognitive and creative processes, informed by ethical considerations and awareness of relevant social and political contexts; but the rewards include enriched skills and knowledge, supporting our personal, professional, creative and critical selves.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Forum Theatre is an improvisational, participatory form in which a brief, prepared scenario is presented to an audience that illustrates an oppressive conflict, such as a teacher (the antagonist) unfairly accusing a student (the protagonist) of cheating on an exam. The scene ends unresolved so that audience members (called spect-actors) can replace the protagonist and replay the scenario several times with different tactics to overcome the oppression. The Forum Theatre event is facilitated by a joker who, like the playing card, can assume multiple roles as needed—facilitator, devil’s advocate, discussion moderator, and so on. (Given 2008, 867)

2 Stanislavski developed circles of attention as a means of gaining, holding, expanding or regaining concentration. We start with a single point of concentration, the object of attention, let’s say a diary. This is placed within a small circle: this might consist of a table in front of the actor with papers, books and a lamp on it. The medium circle could be some armchairs, a bookcase and other people. The large circle might extend to the edge of the stage and side and back walls. The fourth and largest circle will extend offstage and out to the back of the auditorium, or, on a film set, to the horizon beyond fields or the seashore. To focus attention, Stanislavski recommends you start with the object, then expand through the small and medium circles in turn and end with the largest one. If concentration wavers as you’re doing this, go back to a smaller circle. If you lose concentration in performance – although this shouldn’t happen if you are fully committing to the action within a particular circle – you can regain it by refocusing on the object, then the small circle and expanding outwards to the largest. (Gillet 2014)