Research Methods in Performance Studies offers a unique approach for readers to engage with performance research and methods in practice. It examines ways of making performance, researching performance cultures, researching performers who themselves are engaged in research, and conducting research in the context of enduring and emergent themes of performance studies inquiry.
This book features the work of eighteen scholar-artists currently working in performance studies who demonstrate—through applied projects—various methods for conducting performance research. The result is a wide array of novel scholarship including activist performance, slam poetry, video performance, stand-up comedy, adaptation for the Broadway stage, naturecultural performance, intersectional performance, performances of cultural and material preservation, and many others.
Faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and performance practitioners alike will benefit from the approaches to performance studies research methods articulated by the scholar-artists featured in this collection.
Introduction: Performance, Performativity, Research, Method Craig Gingrich-Philbrook and Jake Simmons Section I: Means of Making 1. Adaptation of Literature as Method: Text, Politics, and Representation Matthew Spangler and Humaira Ghilzai 2. Methods on My Mind in the Doing of Performance and Performed Ethnography D. Soyini Madison 3. A Critical Method for Performing Popular Texts: The Adventures of Little Red Riding Hood as Case Study Tracy Stephenson Shaffer 4. Personal Narrative Performance Research: The Visceral, Collaborative, and Susceptible Exploration of the Stories We Tell Others Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock Section II: Researching Performance Cultures 5. Disability and Performance Donna Marie Nudd 6. Expanding Frames of Analysis in Stand-up Comedy Dustin Goltz 7. The Ethnography of Poetry: Or, Slamming Methods Javon Johnson 8. Performance Space and the Architecture of Experience Nathan Stucky 9. Beyond the Bounds of the Classroom: Facilitating Student’s Public Performances Charles Parrott Section III: Researching Performers/Performers Researching 10. Mistranslation as Method in Artistic Research Alys Longley 11. Performative Autoethnography: A Matterphor of Things Tami Spry 12. Race and Social Justice: Performing the Radical Imagination Amber Johnson 13. Critical/Performance Ethnography, Oral History Performance, and Listening: Notes on Methods for Living Research Daniel B. Coleman 14. The Hero’s Journey: Creating a Theatre/Storytelling Performance Inspired by the Work of Joseph Campbell John S. Gentile Section IV: Emerging and Enduring Contexts 15. Posthumanist Performance Studies: Four Practical Assertions Travis Brisini 16. Tourism Rebecca Walker 17. Performance, Technologies, Ontologies: The Video Performance Does Not Stand Alone Lyndsay Michalik Gratch 18. Navigating Place as a Performance Studies Researcher: Waypoints and Breadcrumbs Shauna M. MacDonald Conclusion: Observations on Performance Studies Research and Methods Jake Simmons
Craig Gingrich-Philbrook is Professor of Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA. His interests include postmodern performance, queer performance and theory, performance in mediated environments, philosophy of communication, and communication theory. Jake Simmons is Associate Dean of the Judith Enyeart Reynolds College of Arts and Letters and Associate Professor of Communication at Missouri State University, USA. His research focuses on new materialist approaches to performative writing, autoethnography, and staging practices. He is editor of Text and Performance Quarterly (2022-2024).
