Relational and Aesthetic Accountability: Considerations of a Research-Based Playwright

Research-based Theater (RbT) is shaped by both the form of theater, as an embodied, gestural, spatial, imaginative multi-dimensional art form, and traditions of research surrounding knowledge production, specifically qualitative research. When ethical tensions and questions arise in RbT they are often framed as a dichotomy, such as the ways aesthetic or artistic interests of creating a compelling piece of theater for audiences contrast with responsibilities to research. By drawing on the frame of an aesthetic of relationality, and an example from my work as an RbT playwright from the project Cracked: new light on dementia, I consider the ways both theater and research might be more clearly aligned. This includes how relational and aesthetic accountabilities can offer an important foundation for considering how RbT might be rooted in caring practices and might influence theater-making and the traditions of scientific research more broadly.