Reflective Participant: PaR Symposium

Today I gave a paper about my Daisy Chain Model at the postgraduate PaR conference, Royal Holloway (actually in Egham). This is the paper that I presented minus the power point bit!

Slide 1 Open at Start


Developing Reflective Practice in Performance:
The Daisy Chain Model and Performative Documentation.


INTRODUCTION

Practice as Research (PaR), plays a key role in my research and makes up a large portion of the data acquisition activity. I would like to briefly outline my reasons for adopting PaR as a fundamental research methodology before moving on to discuss the various ways in which I have structured and marshalled that activity. (CLICK to Blank Slide 2)

In my research I want to explore emerging participatory theatre practices, examining both the production and reception from a phenomenological perspective; the experience of particular practices and their reception by a material audience. However, as I began my research activity, I came up against two main difficulties: There is very little documentation available that has recorded makers or audiences actual experiences of contemporary participatory theatre. I realised very quickly that I was in the position of having to generate that primary source material as part of the research process. This also meant that I would require access to the entire process of the making of at least one piece of contemporary participatory theatre; in order to generate that type of primary source material. Not as easy as it sounds! Just identifying and sourcing the participatory work itself as a potential audience member was and still is challenging but attempting to become involved in the process right from inception proved to be a ‘mission impossible’, with the resources and time scale that I have to work with. It soon became evident that if I wished to explore and examine actual experiences, I was going to have to create the circumstances under which I could generate and collect that kind of evidence. So in order to generate the evidence that I needed, I would have to produce my own work, my own piece of participatory theatre.


I decided to use PaR for two reasons; firstly, to develop and explore my own participatory practice in relation to the practices employed by other participatory makers and secondly, to generate anecdotal and localised documentation of the experiences of actual audiences.

SECTION ONE: PaR

I first want to outline my positioning in relation to current PaR debates and discuss the taking up and practical application of PaR for my own research purposes. I want to address the ways in which I have applied PaR as a research methodology.

As a researching practitioner, I am located within the arena of the debate which suggests that practice per se is not in itself a scholarly activity. It is my understanding that practice can only stand as research when it is contextualised in appropriates ways and conducted in a rigorous manner; whether that context is incorporated within the practice itself or is made up from supporting and/or parallel structures. Biggs’ 2003 study for the PARiP project, offers up an interesting and useful classification for varying paradigms of creative practice: He distinguishes between ‘(1) art as therapy (for the individual), (2) art as cultural practice (the production of works of art), and (3) art as research’.

Both of the first paradigms of creative practice contribute to knowledge through the traditional relationship with the academy, through criticism but do not them-selves constitute scholarly activity. For practice to be attended to as research, it has to appropriate methods of fulfilling the traditional criteria of scholarly research. Thus, it must be rigorous in identifying and defining a set of research concerns or questions that relate to issues wider than simply the creative concerns; it has to exercise and communicate those concerns to the wider audience of the academy. The UK Council for Graduate Education state that: ‘Practice based doctorial submissions must include a substantial contextualisation of the creative work. This critical appraisal or analysis not only clarifies the basis of the claim for the originality and location of the work, it also provides the basis for a judgement as to whether general scholarly requirements have been met’. They go on to suggest that ‘this could be defined as judgement of the submission as a contribution to knowledge in the field, showing doctorial level powers of analysis and mastery of existing contextual knowledge, in a form which is accessible to and auditable by knowledgeable peers’; a view which is also supported by the more recent Palatine report, conducted by Nelson. PaR not only needs to be conducted in a scholarly fashion but also needs to be disseminated in order to fulfil its function of contributing to knowledge. It has to be reproducible in some sense of the word.

PaR requires the researching practitioner to not only develop particular modes of conducting practice within a research context but also to devise strategies for documenting their practice in such a way that it can contribute to the scholarly debates of the discipline in which it is being practiced. I first want to discuss the ways in which I approached my PaR before moving on to discuss issues of documentation and dissemination.

SECTION TWO: Applied Models of PaR

I have developed an overriding structure that I hope ensures a dynamic and organic relationship between PaR and other research activities called the Daisy Chain model, which I will show you in due course. I have devised the Daisy Chain Model by developing Trimingham’s Spiral Model, to suit my own particular PaR needs. I first want to explore the theory that underpins the Daisy Chain Model before moving on to discuss the ways in which it structures my PaR activity.

Urry and Law suggest that: ‘the social sciences, including sociology, are relational or interactive. They participate in, reflect upon and enact the social in a wide range of locations including the state’. The core principals of social science, as asserted by Urry and Law, are the foundations for the applied model of action research which Trimingham’s spiral Model has partly grown out of. Robertson defines the ‘underlying principles of action research as reciprocity, reflexivity and reflection’. Indeed, action research main purpose is the creation of knowledge through practice and is an applied methodology for PaR activity that has developed directly out of the education and social science disciplines. Its application in the arena of practice as research, in performance studies is useful because it is not just used to test new knowledge through practice; but it is also concerned with ‘practice developing theory’.

Action research offers some insight into the ways in which the traditional relationship between theory and practice can be problematised, at the same times as providing an applied model of PaR through grounded theory. Robertson aptly cites Kemmis and McTaggart to illustrate this point: ‘action research provides a way of working which links theory and practice into the one whole: ideas-in-action’. This addresses the issue that I raised earlier, of contextualising creative production as rigorous and scholarly; by employing a methodology that requires a constant critically reflective perspective can fuse the two traditionally separate roles of researcher and practitioner.

Trimingham has taken up the principles of action research to devise a model of PaR that in application can structure and lend rigour to the often ephemeral and always anarchic nature of the creative, theatre making process. As Trimingham’s notes, ‘the material on which the research conclusions are based depends almost entirely on a creative process, and the process, in fact, has many disorderly features’. This diagram is a visual representation of Trimingham’s concept.

(CLICK TO SLIDE 3)

As you can see from the diagram, Trimingham’s model prioritises research questions or concerns as the entry point of the spiral and these are what underpin and inform the creative process; but not as a fixed unchanging entity. Instead they are a dynamic and fluid presence that is constantly in flux according to and informed by the creative processes that they seek to underpin. Although the research concerns/questions are the entry point, their dynamic relationship with the creative process create a reciprocal cycle; with theory affecting the creative process and the creative process affecting the research questions. Trimingham asserts that in allowing for the disorderly reality ‘of creative processes, the paradigm model of progress that allows for this is the hermeneutic-interpretive spiral model, where progress is not linear but circular; a spiral which constantly returns to our original point of entry but with renewed understanding’. (CLICK TO BLANK SLIDE 4)

As PaR is not the only research activity that I have and will undertake over the course of my PhD study, I felt that the spiral model needed to be (re) considered to incorporate and include my other research activities; as I felt that they would be as related and influential on the practical activity as the research questions. My intention in devising the Daisy Chain Model was to create a completely dynamic relationship between my practice and all my other research activities. In attempting to reconcile the disjuncture between my Par and all the other research activities, I have identified the need to take up two slightly different roles, which are brought together in a reciprocal, cyclic relationship by the Daisy Chain Model, which I will be demonstrating in more depth shortly.

The two roles are: the reflective practitioner, of which I have already briefly discussed and the reflective participant. According to Schön, ‘through reflection, he [the practitioner] can surface and criticise the tacit understandings that have grown up around the repetitive experiences of a specialised practice [in this case making theatre] and can make new sense of the situations of uncertainty or uniqueness, which he may allow himself to experience.’ By asserting the use of reflection-in-action, which as I have shown is fundamental to action research and the spiral model, the practitioner can lend new insights into their practice through the phenomenology of that practice and practice situations.

Reflective participant is a term that I have coined to describe the activity that I participate in when I attend performances, rehearsals and any other event linked to the making processes of other theatre practitioners. For example, by attending a theatrical event, I enter not only as a member of the public and as part of the audience but as a researcher and maker. I bring a certain agenda to my attendance, to my participation at the event; by participating in the events themselves, not only as a collaborative member of the audience but also in the critical role of the reflective participant. The Daisy Chain is the structure that marshals these roles and the activities undertaken through them.

(CLICK TO SLIDE 5)

As you can see, not unlike the spiral model, the research questions/concerns are the entry point. Each petal represents a circular research activity, which feeds back into the entry point of the research concerns/questions. So instead of a single spiral, we have simultaneous, multiple spirals feeding back into the research concerns/questions. So here we have a practice petal, the activity is undertaken as reflective practitioner; an attendance at a performance while taking up the role of reflective participant, so on and so forth. All those petals represent research activity; at a certain point the research concerns shift as a direct result of the research activity, they are renewed through their relationship with the practical activity. (CLICK TO SLIDE 6) Once they shift, they create a new head, a shifted entry point and the whole cyclic process continues. The petals feed the head and the head makes the petals grow; in a mutually beneficial relationship. It is this structure that I have devised which ensures rigour in my PaR activity and creates a dynamic relationship between all aspects of my research endeavours, without being reductive. (CLICK TO BLANK SLIDE 7)

SECTION THREE: DOCUMENTATION & DISSEMINATION

Documentation and dissemination of PaR is vital if the practice is to function in its capacity as research. Documentation should not simply be and after thought or a post-process activity, instead it is an integral issue that must be engaged with from the very inception of the project. According to Freeman, ‘the employment of the personal, evidenced in reflection, need not function at the expense of a wider, more generic publication of knowledge. The relationship is collusion rather than collision, with the necessary critical discourse being at once contained within and exercised through the product itself’. I would like to spend a little time discussing the ways in which I have engaged with those issues of documentation and the preparation for dissemination. The main question that I have had and am still grappling with, is: What are the traces of performance and documentational materials in relation to the vanished live events? I want to explore some of the documentational methods that I am using and the difficulties that they have thrown up.

I am in the process of making a piece of participatory theatre called Siren Song…In 3 Parts. It is a devised theatre project that seeks to explore the concepts of woman and trauma. It examines the audience’s experiences of what these concepts mean for them through a task-driven, participatory aesthetic; blending some of the principles of playback theatre and a postmodernist performance ethic to generate a unique and provocative theatre intervention. The performance is constructed through a series of tasks and games that ensure a completely unique experience each time it is encountered.

As well as recording my own processes and participation as the theatre maker from inception to reception; I have also been collecting and recording the experiences of the other collaborators involved in the making process, and the final collaborators, the audience. I have been recording and documenting those processes and experiences in various mediums.

I have created a myspace and though this dynamic, interactive communication tool I have been keeping a personal blog that is publicly available. The URL of which, I have made available to all of my creative collaborators and the audiences; all of which are free to add comments, suggestions, thoughts, feelings, ideas and feedback to my entries.

(OPEN MYSPACE PAGE AND GO TO THE BLOG AREA)

As you can see I have been making my entries under different titles, so that I can distinguish what type of research activity the entry pertains to. So here we have entries made under reflective participant, maker, reflective practitioner and so on. It is a very personal and localised account of the process.


I have also recorded the entire making process on DV video. This serves as a digital document of the rehearsal process that compliments and runs parallel to the blog entries.

In addition to the blog entries and digital documentation, I have kept all material artefacts that have been created in and through the creative process. Things such as sketches, drawings, lightning designs, set designs, costumes designs and publicity material.

I am still in the middle of the making process but have presented Siren Song as a work in progress to a live audience twice. As well as the methods of documenting the practice that I have already outlined, I have devised the work itself to contain elements and moments of documentation.

During part two of Siren Song, the audience are asked to contribute to the work themselves by writing their responses to the question: Why is she crying? on small individual, handheld chalkboards. Some of those suggestions are then taken up and used as the impetus for the performers to do impromptu, improvisations on the spot. Here is an example of that clip.

(CLICK INTO SLIDE 8-VIDEO CLIP) once finished (CLICK INTO BLANK 9)

The chalkboards record part of the audiences experience and are photographed after each live performance. In addition to this, each live event is filmed.

One of the key aspects of the work is the inclusion of the diary room that is made available to the audience at the end of the show. Once the piece itself is finished, there is always an after show discussion, which is included in the running time, rather than as a separate event. During the course of the after show discussion the audience are invited to nip into the diary room at any point and leave their own contribution; in whatever form that maybe. Once inside, they have the option of leaving their comments/feedback/thoughts/ideas/contribution on a DV handy cam, an audio recording device or in written form. There are no instructions, other than how to operate the electrical equipment in the room. As the audience come and go to the diary room, the after show discussion is filmed in full.

I have attempted to collect record and document all traces of the process, right from inception through to reception in a manner that is sympathetic to my phenomenological perspective. I do not expect all these elements and traces to stand in place of the live events themselves; they become something else, something other to that which they were created by. As Cologni states, ‘the nature of live Art is in the liveness of both its delivery and fruition, but also of the continuously shifting contextualization of its produced supplements’.The traces left behind produce a re-enactment, through which I hope I will be able to gain some insight into the nature and function of the production and reception through the perspective and re-enactments of the actual collaborators. Mouldering ascribes this point and suggests that ‘whatever survives of a performance in the form of a photograph or video tape is no more than a fragmentary, petrified vestige of a lively process that took place at a different time in a different place’. This does not mean that they are not useful.

Conclusion

All the evidence that I have and will collect during the course of my PaR activity will be localised and specific to the circumstances in which it was generated and collected. The localised, anecdotal and documentational evidence that I have and will collect throughout the PaR activity, is only ever partial; just traces and ghosts, that through their re-enactment of the actual live event, create a changed and different manifestation of that which they were created by. All that is left to offer is simply dust; as Phelan suggests, ‘performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representation: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance…[as] it betrays and lessens the promise of it’ own ontology.’ (Phelan 1993: 149)

The methods of collecting evidence that I am applying will only ever produce a ghostly re-enactment, partial and changed, for the work of others as well as my own and is a factor which needs to be considered in the conceptualization of the research findings. Although the documentation and anecdotal evidence will provide some insight into the experiences of those involved in the events, they do not stand up as a complete understanding or theory for the nature and role of the audience. The experiences themselves need to be subjected to modes of inquiry that will conceptualize the experiences in order to discover the implications for wider theoretical concerns: aesthetically, socially and culturally.

While at the conference I was bale to participate in several workshop performance presentations; here are some of the thoughts that I jotted down during the day:

Creating multiple layered narrative through repetition of voice and movement, rather than through stories-leaving the audience to code and decode the significance of the events-the writerly audience.

Game, task and rule as devices used to make the performers present.
Practice as proof- as scientific experience or evidence of hypothesis.

Mapping and documenting experience using visual representation (www.ourplaceourstage.net)