Disrupting the hierarchy of knowledge production: the case of documenting social theatre in Palestine

ABSTRACT The field of social theatre is founded in community-engaged creative processes. It is inherently political, embedded in its geopolitical and social environment. Yet existing methods of documentation – the distribution and gathering of data and its output - do not always reflect this tradition. Methods related to documentation raise various concerns around consistent ways to gain and share knowledge if the meanings that we cultivate are not approached as an active, non-hierarchised exchange with and among communities, activists and practitioners we serve. In general form, these concerns are: a) What are the implications of needing to document social theatre; and b) What becomes of this knowledge? These two questions are demonstrated within the case of documentation in the occupied Palestinian territories. In a region containing the most documented and recorded conflict in the world (Debray 2007), academic research serves arguably to impose structure on a given phenomenon. Yet ‘imposing’ structure – or what one considers as such – raises additional concerns of perpetuating dynamics of colonial occupation amidst a population that is increasingly denied self-representation. Using this example, I argue that the future of our field risks data fossilising if it does not retain creative flexibility in crossing disciplines, in protecting grassroots and practice-based forms of knowledge cultivation, and in taking risks in permitting inquiries to test our scholarly expertise. This piece argues for an epistemological shift in our knowledge production – both its collection and distribution.