2022: Can We Talk About Death? Autobiography and Connection: A study of the adaptation of socially engaged practice for a public audiences

McCormick, Sheila

Abstract

Applied Theatre practice often balances successful engagement with evidence of impact, particularly in a research and funding landscape where impact is considered (by such bodies as the UK Research Excellence Framework and Knowledge Exchange Framework for example) a measure of excellence. This paper explores that balance examining two inter-related Practice as Research (PaR) projects to do so.

In 2019, I developed a PaR project entitled Death, Dinner, and Performance: The Use of Performance to Enhance Conversations Around Death and Dying. Developed from earlier research on ageing and applied creative practice that culminated in the publication of a monograph entitled 'Applied Theatre: Creative Ageing' (Bloomsbury, 2017), the project was also informed by my previous experience as a Registered General Nurse working in palliative and end of life care.

The Death, Dinner, and Performance project developed a performance strategy and ritualised event (the death dinners) to examine the potential of intimate, autobiographical performance in a communal, commensal setting to transgress taboo and enable access to the difficult subjects of death, dying and bereavement. The events required a high level of participation/ engagement from the dinner guests and facilitation from me as host/ performer/ facilitator. Out of this, the experience of hosting the event and analysis of the post death dinner questionnaires showed a significant level impact for the participants of the project.

Again using a PaR methodology, I am now in the process of adapting that work into a solo public performance entitled Can We Talk About Death?. Its development, I hope, will allow me to reach a wider audience and to consider how the adaptation and change in frame and engagement (from intimate, relational creative practice to public performance) alters impact. Or to put it another way, to consider how impact changes when the creative interaction moves from participation/facilitation to reception/performance.


Thus, the current project, its full title being Can We Talk About Death? Autobiography and Connection: A study of the adaptation of socially engaged practice for a public audiences, seeks to
• Interrogate the potential for intimate engagement to be adapted into larger public facing performance and to explore the outcome of that adaptation.
• Explore the ability of autobiographical performance strategies and verbatim material from the death dinners to prompt reflection on death and dying in a public facing audience.
• Explore the dramaturgically and performance strategies used to support that reflection and their impact.
• Consider the changes in frame from facilitation and participation to performance making and reception and what potentially might be lost or gained through that adaptation.
• Consider that change on engagement and outcome.

Citation

McCormick, S. (2023, January). 2022: Can We Talk About Death? Autobiography and Connection: A study of the adaptation of socially engaged practice for a public audiences

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Start Date: Jan 2, 2023
• End Date: Jun 5, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jun 27, 2023