The Philosophical, Ethical and Political Considerations Involved in Theatricalising Data

Abstract

Responding to Mazzei and Jackson’s (Introduction: the limit of voice. In: Jackson A, Mazzei L (ed) Voice in qualitative inquiry: challenging conventional, interpretative, and critical conceptions in qualitative research. Routledge, London, 1–13, 2009) advice to feminist researchers to democratise research by fully exposing all decision-making processes, I make transparent the philosophical, ethical and political considerations which informed my decision to employ proto-verbatim theatre to re-present the lived experience of women casual academics. In particular, I contemplate the role of Brechtian and feminist theatre in creating highly theatricalised verbatim theatre to evocatively engage an audience, and to make transparent the re-telling nature of research communication. I finally propose that the conceptual research framework we adopt ought to lay the foundation for all creative decisions made in an Arts-based research, to create research cohesion and integrity.