TheatReSearching: Theory – Historiography – Practice

We share a common interest in “TheatReSearching”, a verbal noun in which theatre and researching overlapp, and that allows for a flexible and exploratory approach to theater studies as an academic discipline. The research group’s goal is to strengthen individual research projects and ensure high academic quality through scholarly discussions and collective text analysis.

The material we work with spans from antiquity to the present day and encompasses all forms of performing arts. The research group views theater as both local and global, and as being in dialogue with society. This creates a need to investigate how migration, diaspora, and colonial processes influence theater and the construction of knowledge.

The group is also interested in how perspectives from theater studies can be applied to understand a wide range of cultural practices. The history of media and technology, critical gender theory, and ecocriticism are examples of how insights from various academic traditions can enrich the study of theater.

The group employs a variety of complementary methodological approaches. Archival research, performance analysis, drama analysis, discourse analysis, interview methods, and theory development are just some of the approaches the members use to study theater as an artistic, institutional, and social practice, a social institution, and a cultural phenomenon.

The members of the research group are active researchers who use scholarly publications and a wide range of outreach activities to shed light on and discuss academic questions and analyses. In addition, several of the members have practical experience in performance and as critics, dramaturgs, and producers.