New Book Announcement: Making/Doing/Thinking: Methods for Performance Research (Open Access)
15 January, 2025 by Mark Fleishman | 0 comments

This open-access handbook provides practical guidance on PaR methods for performance research, offering philosophical underpinnings and bespoke methodological approaches to inspire and guide others.
In recent decades scholars globally have advocated for artistic practice or performance as research (PaR) in higher education institutions as a valuable and innovative way of developing knowledge and knowledge paradigms. PaR has been championed for extending what we know and how we come to learn about it in ways that are embodied, processual and integrate creative and intellectual projects and practices in productive ways. Much of the published discussion about PaR takes the form of overarching philosophies and less attention has been given to the granular processes through which individual PaR projects are realised. Each PaR process is unique to the researcher, their particular artistic practice and their research question. Each successful PaR process is also fundamentally rigorous in its research design. This handbook seeks to give insights into the bespoke sets of methods researchers develop to rigorously support their overallmethodology of PaR – a ‘how-to’ in support of the philosophy of PaR.
The book has been made possible by grant funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Reimagining Tragedy in Africa and the Global South (ReTAGS) project (2019-2024), based in the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. ReTAGS has used PaR as its foundational methodology and seeks to promote PaR in the work of African and global South scholars. Part I of the handbook reproduces Mark Fleishman’s writing on PaR, giving a sense of the key philosophical concerns in this research approach. Part II offers individually authored chapters by scholars who have come through postgraduate programmes at the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies (formerly UCT’s Drama Department). The handbook offers inspirations and guiding compasses to scholars embarking on their own, unique PaR journeys.
Download here: https://openbooks.uct.ac.za/uct/catalog/book/70
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