Research-Based Theatre, Military Trauma, and Mad Praxis

Abstract

This article, based on my study of military trauma, argues that research-based theatre is an appropriate and promising methodology for those interested in conducting and sharing mad research. Research-based-theatre is dialogic in nature (offering nuance to cut and dry psychiatric discourse); is centred around "embodiment" (which is often lost in conversations about "mental illness”); and is a form of story-sharing in community. It disrupts the individualized one-on-one dyadic therapeutic approach to helping those who are struggling within problematic systems, moving instead towards a social model that “interrupts public life.”¹ This article highlights how mad theory, mad aesthetics, and mad activism can be creatively woven into each stage of a research-based theatre project intended to critique hegemonic conceptions of trauma—from the interview questions that are asked, to the decision as to whether the play should be “verbatim”/documentary in nature or consist instead of “composite” characters, stories, and extralinguistic elements to stay true to the data. This article also describes research-based theatre’s relationship to critical pedagogy, and the author shares excerpts from the play to help demonstrate how pairing specific theatrical devices that are rooted in embodiment and estrangement can inspire both cognitive and affective responses and spark critical consciousness in ways that align with mad movement aspirations while avoiding objectivist inclinations.

 
[1] Norman Denzin, Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture (Sage, 2003), 11. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412985390

Keywords: Military trauma, research-based theatre, phenomenology, PTSD, moral injury, embodiment, arts-based research

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