Knowing in our bones: interrogating embodied practice in theatre-making/theatre-teaching through self-study

Abstract

This article explores the use of self-study as a methodology for interrogating embodied practice, in our work as theatre-makers, teachers, and researchers. This approach offers a means to uncover and elucidate the embodied knowledge that often remains unspoken in artists’ creative processes. Such knowledge is deeply personal, difficult to express, and often reduced to the generic catch-all terms of talent or instinct. While talent and instinct are important, we believe that finding ways to codify and communicate the ‘knowing how’ of the artist’s embodied practice is significant for the discourse of drama and performance. Self-study is a methodology borrowed from teacher education practice; this article explores the potential application of the method beyond the borders of traditional education discourse into the field of creative arts and practitioner research. We position self-study as reflexive, and explore its connections to practice as research and a/r/tography, offering theatre practitioners, teachers, and researchers a methodology that recognizes, supports, and nurtures the creative impulse and its embodied nature. This article draws on the literature and theoretical aspects of self-study in order to reflect on the possibilities it affords creative artists for innovative and interdisciplinary research around their embodied practice.