The director’s ‘I’: theatre, self, and self-study
Abstract
This article interrogates the connections between the self-study research methodology
and the making of a piece of theatre, and explores ways in which self-study can
offer a new arts-based research paradigm for theatre-makers. There are a number
of useful parallels to be explored between the self-study project and structures of
drama and performance-making. While the methodology is, to a large extent, aimed
at teacher educators, we argue that it is sufficiently flexible to be transferable to the
context of theatre-making because of the emphasis on practice in both self-study
research and theatre. Using the a/r/tographic frame, we explore ways in which the
experiential dynamic of both fields offers a unique intersection point from which
to generate new thinking. The dialogic necessity of self-study is paralleled by the
interactive processes of performance-making – what Marowitz (1978: 49) calls the
“actor-director two-step”. Hence, the article uses dialogue as a way of demonstrating
our thinking-in-action, and reflects the co-created space of learning and knowledge
generation. Using self-study to interrogate our own creative work opens up space for
new understandings in relation to both the discourse of Drama study and the broader
self-study project.