Playbuilding As Qualitative Research ─ A Participatory Arts-Based Approach

This book is for both art-based researchers and research-informed artists, exploring the theatrical genre known as Collective Creation, or Playbuilding. Performers generate data around chosen topics— from addiction and sexuality to qualitative research—by compiling scenes from their disparate voices. Audience members become involved in the investigation, and the performed scenes do not end the conversation but challenge and extend it. Through discussion and audience participation, the process examines how knowledge is defined and how data is mediated.

Joe Norris teaches drama in the Department of Dramatic Arts of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University in Canada. Norris is co-founder and artistic director of Mirror Theatre, which has created over two hundred research-based scenes that examine issues of social justice and the human condition.