Emerging Research Design and the Importance of Play

For me, ‘research time’ arrives at the end of a busy teaching year, when the last student essays are marked and suddenly a space opens up in which I can think, and read, and plan, and do. My artistic practice is outdoor theatre, street performance, site specific theatre and festival walkabout performance. However, as a lecturer I do not teach within my primary artistic field. Instead, my teaching is focused on the critical semiotics of costume and performance design, on academic essay writing and Cultural Studies. There is little time between September and May for me to step out of this discourse and engage with my personal art.

Because of this ‘split personality’, the first couple of summer research weeks are always a strange transition, in which I have to give myself permission to step away from the ‘academic’ identity in order to access my creative thinking. It is hard…