An Aesthetic of Relationality: Embodiment,Imagination,and the Necessity of Playing the Fool in Research-Informed Theater

Abstract

Research-informed theater is often informed by an assumed linear trajectory between research findings and performance, overlooking the multiple embodied perspectives that are implicated in the development of research-informed theater. To challenge this assumption, we explore how artist-researchers draw on their own embodiment and imagination as ways to understand the research findings, how they conceptualize the intended audience, and how those understandings shape the creative process of the research-informed play. Using the case study of the research-informed play Cracked: New Light on Dementia, we focus on three interrelated modes of practice: playful extending, foolish disrupting, and inventive disrupting. We argue that these modes of practice create an aesthetic of relationality, what we define as an aesthetic space within which the embodied interpretive work of artist-researchers is extended into spatial, relational contexts. We discuss implications of this theoretical framework for a new critical inquiry.