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Graduate School NeverPrepared Me for This:Reflections on the challenges ofresearch based theatreRoss E. Gray aa Psychosocial and Behavioural Research Unit,Toronto-Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre, 2075Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M4N 3M5, CanadaPublished online: 18 Aug 2010.
To cite this article: Ross E. Gray (2000) Graduate School Never Prepared Me forThis: Reflections on the challenges of research based theatre, Reflective Practice:International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 1:3, 377-390, DOI: 10.1080/713693161
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Re¯ ective Practice, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2000
Graduate School Never Prepared Me forThis: re¯ ections on the challenges ofresearch-based theatreROSS E. GRAYPsychosocial and Behavioural Research Unit, Toronto± Sunnybrook Regional Cancer
Centre, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4N 3M5; e-mail:
ABSTRACT This paper describes and discusses the development of our research-based
dramatic presentation, Handle with Care: Women Living with Metastatic BreastCancer. I then re¯ ect upon how engagement in this project has challenged me to extend
beyond traditional researcher role(s). In bridging the worlds of research and theatre, I have
taken on the roles of: researcher as beginner, researcher as actor, researcher as two-bit
hustler, researcher as worrier, researcher as one who suffers, researcher as companion,
researcher as agent of social transformation, and researcher as conveyor of hope.
It is not easy to retrace the steps and describe how I came to immerse myself inresearch-based theatre. Like everything else, the in¯ uences are many, apparentcausal pathways undermined by multiple readings. There are personal threadsrelated to frustrated creativity, undeveloped potential. Passion for the expressive artslinks backwards in time to the un® nished novel in my desk drawer, to the binder® lled with my unpublished poems. I recently remembered an incident. Uncharacter-istically, at a party 10 years ago, I accosted a renowned playwright for advice abouthow to do what he does. He was dismissive. I shelved my desire (again), and wrotea few academic papers to wash the bitter taste from my mouth.
Coming to research-based theatre also connects with my life as a researcher,particularly to the debates raging within qualitative methodologies and my ownstruggles with those. Research-based theatre represents another attempt to come toterms with issues such as: the nature of knowledge construction, considerationsabout how to best honour and represent others’ voices, concerns about truth andvalidity, and especially the desire to have research make a difference in the world.
Laurel Richardson’s chapter in the Handbook of Qualitative Research, about writingas a form of inquiry, was a ¯ ashpoint. `It seems foolish at best, and narcissistic andwholly self-absorbed at worst, to spend months or years doing research that ends upnot being read and not making a difference to anything but the author’ s career’
ISSN 1462-3943 print; ISSN 1470-1103 online/00/030377-14 Ó 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/14623940020025615
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378 R. E. Gray
(Richardson, 1994, p. 517). Along with the resurfacing of doubt about the useful-ness of my work, I felt hopeful. Her mention of using research results to write scriptsfor theatre resonated deeply with suppressed urges and understandings.
My growing fascination with the possibilities of research-based theatre quicklyfound an opportunity for expression. Our research group had been meeting regularlyto re¯ ect together on some very evocative transcripts from focus groups we hadconducted with women with metastatic breast cancer. The material was so rich thatit seemed to cry out for fuller exposure than would be provided by the article I wasdrafting for an academic journal. And there was a funding competition deadline thatjust happened to be coming up at the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. So I didwhat I have done countless times before, dashed off a proposal, hastily cobblingtogether a partnership with various organizations. We proposed to take the results ofour study of women with metastatic breast cancer, and of a companion study withmedical oncologists treating breast cancer patients, and use them to create adramatic production. We would take it on tour. I sent the proposal away, and turnedmy attention to the next grant proposal.
It was only after we found out that our project was to receive partial funding thatI had the chance to investigate the history and current state of research-basedtheatre. I discovered that, in Canada and elsewhere, there was a rich tradition oftheatre focused on social change and education, employing participatory strategiesin script development, and sometimes using the actual voices of members of thecommunity under study (e.g. Bates, 1996; Filewood, 1987; Jackson, 1993; Kidd &Byram, 1978; Moon, 1993). While research was de® nitely an aspect of this work,the emphasis was usually on political, educational, and/or aesthetic considerations.Drama that emphasizes research is much more recent, and far fewer authors havepublished their attempts to foreground research in the construction of drama (e.g.Ellis & Bochner, 1992; Finley, 1998; McCall, 2000; Mienczakowski, 1996a, 1996b,1997; Paget, 1993; Saladana, 1998; Walstrom, 1996). Of particular note is thegroundbreaking `ethnodrama’ work of Jim Mienczakowki in Australia, which `ad-heres to the principles of a formal and recognizable ethnographic research method-ology, above and beyond the artistic demands of aesthetics, in its attempts toproduce cultural critique’ (1999, p. 8).
I sometimes wonder if I would have taken the ® rst step towards developing ourdramatic production, Handle with Care? Women Living with Metastatic Breast Cancer
(Ivonoffski & Gray, 1998), had I known all the challenges that awaited. I entered the® eld blissfully unaware of what we were in for. What I want to do in this paper istell you what we got, focusing ® rst on describing the developmental process. But inthis paper I especially want to focus on what I got, as a researcher, and how myinvolvement in this process has reshaped my notions of the researcher role. Fromamong the many voices that have been heard in making this project into a reality,mine will be privileged here.
This is a project that has been marinated in re¯ ectivity. We have had to constantlyengage our minds, feelings, and bodies, collectively and individually , with sortingout how to proceed with a task for which there were no `how-to’ manuals and fewpractical or theoretical landmarks. We entered a terrain in which re¯ ective process
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The Challenges of Research-based Theatre 379
became essential, a terrain that could be described as the `swampy lowland wheresituations are confusing ª messesº incapable of technical solution’ . (SchoÈ n, 1983,p. 42). Our re¯ ections have had many different shapes. Sometimes, we have had to`re¯ ect-in-action’ (SchoÈ n, 1983), sorting crises out in the moment, on our feet. Butwe have also used more formal ways to `re¯ ect-on-action’ (SchoÈ n, 1983), discussingwhat has been happening with the development of the project. And we have madetime to `re¯ ect-for-action’ (Brubacher et al., 1993), proactively planning where weare going, or think we are going. There have been many group meetings, sometimeswith everyone present, sometimes with small combinations of people focused onparticular issues. To document emerging issues, formal interviews have been con-ducted with participants in the project, and later analyzed. And, as advocated byother proponents of re¯ ective practice (Loughran, 1996), I have kept a journal tochart my impressions of the various paths we have traveled.
Creating Handle with Care?
Handle with Care? arose out of two qualitative research studies. In the ® rst study,focus groups were held around Ontario with women with metastatic breast cancer.Our purpose was to investigate their information needs and the life issues they werefacing. Then we interviewed oncologists, asking them about the issues that womenin the focus group study had identi® ed as important. Our research team did athematic analysis of interview transcripts. In undertaking this research phase,women with breast cancer were involved as investigators and consultants, not just asresearch participantsÐ so that their perspectives could shape the project as itdeveloped. The interpretation of study results and the writing of conclusions foreventual publication in a journal (Gray et al., 1998) thus involved a negotiationamong team members, including patients/survivors, social scientists, and medicalstaff.
After the initial studies were completed, our research team formed a partnershipwith ACT II Studio, a theatre program for older adults at Ryerson PolytechnicUniversity in Toronto. Their director, Vrenia Ivonoffski, agreed to provide artisticleadership in developing the dramatic production. The process of working on theproject began with a series of meetings, held every few weeks over a period of sixmonths. Researchers, women with breast cancer (two with metastatic disease andseveral who remained well after initial treatment), and actors who were part of thetheatre program attended the meetings. Elsewhere we have written about the relativecontributions of these different subgroups to our project, with their varying assump-tions about the topic of metastatic breast cancer, and with their varying approachesto knowledge creation (Sinding & Gray, submitted). By way of example, membersof the research team initially placed much more emphasis on the original studyresults, while the artistic director and actors oriented themselves to the topicprimarily through the women with breast cancer who were present in the scriptdevelopment group. Another example comes from our early dif® cult discussionsabout what it means to have metastatic breast cancer. While researchers werepredisposed to accept biomedical notions of disease, and the relevance of statistics
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for assessing probabilities, other group members resisted and disputed evidence thatcancer is rarely curable once it has traveled beyond the region of the breast to otherparts of the body. As is always the case when there are valuable contributions fromdifferent perspectives, tensions arose and negotiations had to be undertaken.
The work of developing a script followed several interweaving pathways. Thewomen with metastatic breast cancer told their personal experiences, allowing anentryway for others to the emotional domain of metastatic cancer. Impressions,fears, and concerns were raised in response to these stories. We also brought ouranalytic faculties to reading and discussing the research transcripts (and academicpapers) from the studies with breast cancer patients and oncologists, doing our bestto identify and grapple with the primary issues. Then Vrenia introduced us to a newtype of re¯ ection, in which we used our bodies to experience the dilemmas faced byill women and the people who surround them. We threw ourselves into countlessimprovisation exercises, pursuing deeper understandings of the major themesidenti® ed by the research team. For several weeks we met almost every day to workon script development, drawing most of the words directly from the transcripts ofour two studies. After Vrenia completed a ® rst draft, we made countless changes andmodi® cations, some in response to feedback from test audiences of breast cancerpatients and physicians.
On the Road
I raised enough money to allow us to travel throughout Ontario, presenting in alleight cities where there is a regional cancer centre. We presented slightly differentversions of the show to audiences of health professionals and to the general public.Responding to unanticipated demand, we continued beyond our original scheduleand have made close to 200 presentations, including a Canadian tour, and perfor-mances in selected US cities. In addition, we recently launched a new research-based theatre production, entitled No Big Deal?, about issues related to prostatecancer. We are on a roll.
Handle with Care? has been an enormous success (Gray et al., 2000). It has hadmuch more impact than any of us involved with the project could have imagined.And it has fundamentally altered my way of thinking about myself as a researcher.In what follows I provide more details about the nature of this shift, drawingprimarily on my diary re¯ ections and on interviews that my colleague Chris Sindinghas conducted with me over time. In the ways of qualitative research, and in thepursuit of a `deeper’ re¯ ection that will cast light on my practice as a researcher(Clarke et al., 1996), I have reviewed this documentation to help identify majorthemes that de® ne my researcher experiences with the drama work.
Researcher as Beginner
I have thought long and hard about qualitative research issues, and am conversantwith the major controversies. But I am not familiar with the theatre world, althoughI have been on a crash course these last two years. In my naõÈ vete I thought I could
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The Challenges of Research-based Theatre 381
write a script for our production, without too much of a stretch. After all, I havepublished lots of articles in academic journals, and have a longstanding interest inthe creative arts. But it became quickly apparent that I knew nothing about stagingand was oblivious to the nuances of visual presentation. For too many years I hadbeen held captive by written text. Fortunately, the artistic director, Vrenia Ivonoff-ski, staged, and wrote most of, Handle with Care? I could never have done it sobrilliantly. For our new research-based production, about prostate cancer issues, weco-wrote the script. But it has been clear that I am the apprentice. In some ways, thisbeginner’ s mind has always been present in my work, burgeoning with each newresearch project. But it was really present at the start of this work, as I lacked eventhe basic tools that were required.
Beyond issues of my personal limitations as a potential playwright, my experiencemay speak more broadly to researchers newly exploring the dramatic sphere. It isworth consulting with experts in the expressive arts. It is critical that we acknowl-edge not just our own lack of training, but the skill sets that others have spent yearscrafting. If the arts are to avoid becoming a site of imperialistic expansion byresearchers, we must negotiate our entries with care.
Researcher as Actor
I had not intended to act in Handle with Care? But they needed a man in the cast.Practically speaking, I should not have taken it on. I did not have the time. I had notraining.
Nothing in the research design courses I took at university prepared me for themoment that I stood in front of an audience of my peers, about to speak my ® rstlines in Handle with Care? My legs shook. I was convinced that I would fall to the¯ oor. All eyes in the auditorium were undoubtedly trans® xed on my widely gyratingknees.
Sure, I had felt nervous presenting talks about research, but then I had notes torefer to. Then I re¯ ected wryly on the material, spoke dispassionately, stayed cool,and distanced. My new task is to immerse myself in the research material and toportray it with passion. Vrenia has been after me to project more, to sell myself tothe audience, to show them that I believe what I am saying in every pore of my body.I have rarely seen such behaviour at a research convention, or at Oncology GrandRounds.
The contrast with the usual role constructed by and for social scientists is striking.We are trained to be observers. Even with all the recent shifting and moving withinqualitative methodsÐ the participatory projects, the co-creation of interviews, theinclusion of the researcher’s subjectivityÐ we are still, in large part, observers. Weenter into the worlds of our participants, carefully, and with much attention toboundary issues. We stay awhile, and then we exit to analyze, interpret, and write.Some of us go back to check that we got it right. While more qualitative researchersare choosing to be engaged and less protected from the vicissitudes of everyday life,we are still at arm’ s length from much that we study. It is nothing at all like standing
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382 R. E. Gray
in the participant’s body, playing his role, speaking his words, putting oneself on theline.
After years of sitting in front of a computer, typing, and countless meetings withcolleagues, discussing, there is something liberating about the movement of my bodyacross the stage. It is exhilarating when I stride to the front of the stage and raise myarms to shout my anger at my sick wife who wants me to go talk with a psychologist.
If she’ s going to tell me you’ve got cancer, well I’m sick of people tellingme you have cancer. Everybody I run into is telling me you have cancer.WELL, I KNOW YOU HAVE CANCER!
I stick my hands into my pockets and, with the greatest pleasure, revert to an almost
forgotten teenage self, telling the doctor:
CANCER SUCKS! Those treatments you’ve got mom on, I think they’remaking her worse. She gets so sick. And everyone has to tiptoe around soshe can rest. And dad’s always on our case now about doing more aroundthe house. I hate coming home and ® nding her lying on the couch. It pissesme off! I don’ t want to lose her.
And I ® nd new sympathies for my physician colleagues as I step into their shoes.
We’re human too, you know, and after the patient stops progressing andyou’ve gone through this treatment and that, and there’s not a lotmore ¼ many of us feel that I can’ t really help her anymore as far astreatments go, and they’ re sort of frightening to face. These ladies will lookat you with these eyes and sort of say, `You’ve got to do something more’ .And you know there is nothing more you can do, not from the treatment,you know. And the way I get around it is by saying, `I really can’ t doanything for the cancer but I can help you’ . Now some will be comfortedby that, but some will say, `What do you mean, you can’t do anything morefor my cancer? There’ s got to be something more you can do’ , you know.And it becomes like you almost try to avoid the person the next timearound because you’ve already said that you can’ t do anything for thecancer, yet they’re always still looking for something, you know.
This is not arm’ s length. I am into it with my whole body. And it connects me to the lived
reality of my research participants in new and richer ways. I feel the desperation of those
husbands and sons in my bones. This makes me think about the popular trend over the past
decade to re-establish a place for the body in sociology and related disciplines (Frank,
1990). While this has been an important shift, the inclusion of bodies must extend beyond
abstract theorizing, and must include not just the bodies of our research participants, but
also our own ® ngers and toes.
Becoming an actor solved a problem of which I had not been entirely aware. Theacting group was looking for something more than a research consultant. Theywanted more engagement. They wanted commitment and enthusiasm. Lookingback at interview transcripts with cast members, I see their concern early on that Imight be judging them. I was not leaping into the fray, at least not on their terms.
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The Challenges of Research-based Theatre 383
Their terms meant engaging with the project hopefully, rather than waiting criticallyfor proof of merit. Acting propelled me to that new level of engagement. And itallowed me to see the practiced role of dispassionate researcher as a danger to thecreative process.
Researcher as Observer
Translating research into drama has often forced me to go beyond the moreanalytical re¯ ective roles encouraged in academia, namely those of trained observerand critical thinker. But that original training has nevertheless had its usefulness.The acting group struggled with their felt need to impart messages to audiences,especially physicians. My role was to reassure them that it was good enough todemonstrate our ® ndings. We did not have to deliberately educate or lecture.Moralistic judgements were not the point.
It was also my role, and those of others involved with the research process, to ensure that
the shape of the performance was consistent with our research transcripts. This was
straightforward when quotes came directly from the transcripts, like the one that follows.
You’ re told, like, `Enjoy your summer’ , you know what I mean? He tookme by the hand, and, you know what I mean. It doesn’ t take a rocketscientist to ® gure out what you’re saying. Enjoy your summer because it’ syour last one. But at the same time, I was told `when this treatment stopsworking’ ¼ and I said to him, `When?’ I said, `If, not when. Who are youto decide it’ s going to fail? It’ s like, well, most treatments, the longestthey’ ll last, depending on the type of chemotherapy, depending on thepatient, will only work for so long.’ And it’ s ® ne to quote statistics, but atthe same time, you don’ t know. And he also sat there and told me there arepatients who have lived longer. And what if I’m one of them? And you’retelling meÐ you know, if you plant a seed, it’ s thereÐ I’ ve got this setperiod of time. I feel like I lost my summerÐ I didn’ t live because I wasanticipating the end. And here I am a year later. And I know he hasresponsibilities as a physician. And I’m not asking to be given some kind offalse hope. I’m fairly intelligent, and I don’ t expect that. But don’t write meoff.
But sometimes group members wanted to include experiences beyond those of ourresearch participants. One woman had a friend with breast cancer who had aparticularly horri® c encounter with her doctor, and she wanted to include thatinteraction. I pointed out that such extreme encounters were not typical and werenot re¯ ected by what women in our focus groups reported. This did not automati-cally mean that the scene should not be included, as we were all willing to entertainother experiences and inputs beyond the focus group transcriptsÐ especially thestories from the women in the cast with metastatic disease. But it did prompt us tocarefully consider individual experiences in the broader context of the experiences ofmany women.
When Jan Livingston wrote a monologue about what she, as a woman with
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metastatic breast cancer, wanted from doctors, everyone wanted to include it in thescript, as it so clearly captured the experiences of many women.
Don’ t dash my hope. Don’ t say `when this treatment fails’ Ð say `if’ . You’vebeen through this a hundred times but this is my ® rst time and I’m hangingon day-by-day to the hope that this will work. I don’t want to hear at thisstage that it’ s going to fail. It’ s a small thing for you, but for me it makesa big difference.
Use my nameÐ it’ ll make me feel like you care for me as an individual.And look at me. When you don’ t, I get nervousÐ like you’ re trying to avoidme. After allÐ I’m going to be sensitive to two things: Am I going to beokay for now? Do I have anything to hope for?
Help ease my anxiety by telling me what to expect with tests andtreatmentÐ what the procedure is, what I’ ll experience, and what some ofthe after effects might be. I was on medication that gave me brutalheadaches. I thought I had brain metastases. If only I’d known it was acommon side effect.
Give me a sense that I’ ll be able to cope and that you’ ll be there for meevery step of the way. This is the most intense and demanding journey ofmy life and you’re my travelling companion. In fact, you’ re my main guide.Your reassurance at each stepÐ your courage to face me even when I panicand turn my terror into rage against you is what I desperately seek. Standby me. Stay connected. Please don’ t lose interest.
One of the interesting developments over time was that all cast members came toembrace the importance of staying true to the transcripts. There was a strongly feltsense of responsibility to all those women who were ill and who made the (some-times huge) effort to participate in the original research. We wanted to make sure wedid not lose our way in artistic cleverness, or our own ideas about coping withillnessÐ to be sure that the voices of women with metastatic disease would ring clearand strong in the eventual production.
Researcher as Two-bit Hustler
Hustling is not new to those of us engaged with grantsmanship. But this project hasdemanded hustling on a new level. An initial and important Education Grant fromthe Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) did not come close to paying forthe project. Eventually, after we had been already performing for several months,and fearing we would not have money to meet accumulating commitments, theCBCF provided more funding, as did the Canadian Cancer Society. But moresupport was still required. To seek funding from research granting agencies seemedimpractical because peers would likely not accept our novel approach and, even ifthey did, funding would arrive too late because of the prolonged approval processes.So I turned to the corporate world. I began to think about the public pro® le I couldoffer sponsors. I gathered logos and sent company representatives Handle with Care?
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The Challenges of Research-based Theatre 385
t-shirts. I arranged for pharmaceutical companies to set up information booths atour performances.
It is a whole new set of criteria by which to be judged. Nobody in the corporateworld cares about the rigor of our methodology or whether there is a strongtheoretical basis for the work. They care about selling things. They care aboutin¯ uencing physicians’ prescribing patterns. They care about image. More andmore, I care about these things too. It is not that I want to be caring about them.I do not believe that consumerism should be the guiding principal of our society. ButI do not run this world.
Part of me cringes at the new entrepreneurial heights (depths?) that this projectdemands of me. Some days, I remind myself of the aluminum siding salesmen in The
Tin Men, an old Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito comedy. At what point doesthe admired entrepreneurial hustler become a con man? Where are the ethicalguidelines to chart my path? More than one pharmaceutical representative has askedif we could insert the name of their drug into the dialogue in the show. I’ ve said no.So far.
I admit that there is also part of me that is excited about my newfound need toseek ® nancial support outside the sheltered halls of academe and government-spon-sored granting agencies. Too much reliance on traditional research funding sourcescan lead researchers to believe that our work is a right, not a privilege. We canbecome deluded into thinking that approval of peers through review processes isproof of relevance and social value. And accountability too easily gets framed interms of ® nal budget reports and appropriate pro® ling of granting agencies in peerreviewed publications.
It is terrifying to try and compete in the open market, but there is also somethinghonest and refreshing in the `real-world’ parameters of accountability. We areaccountable to our sponsors, but that is secondary to our accountability to audi-ences. If we are not providing a product that gets them excited, that makes adifference in their lives, we will not be in business for long.
Researcher as Worrier
Worry is a familiar aspect of my research life. Worry about the likely success of thenext grant proposal. Worry about slower than anticipated accrual. About computerbreakdowns. Budget snafus. So how can it be that worry stands out as one of thehallmarks of this project?
Worry takes new shapes. Will the audience like the performance? Will they clap?Will they walk out in disgust? Will patients feel we did justice to their struggles? Willphysicians?
I also worry about the actors. Several of the women who were initially treated forbreast cancer and now are well feared a recurrence as we read transcripts about theexperience of metastatic disease. What right had we, as researchers, to introduce thisinto their lives? Another woman talked about her nightmares about a possible ® rstdiagnosis. Will she be okay? And then I worry about the actors with metastatic breastcancer. How long can they stay well? Do they feel that their incredible efforts on
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behalf of this project are worthwhile? How will the other actors be affected if one ofthe women suddenly becomes critically ill or dies?
I worry about women in our audiences. Are there some that have been told theyhave metastatic cancer, but have never been told that it is likely incurable? Will weinadvertently undermine hope, and send individual women careening into crisis?
Many of these worries relate to ethics. How does informed consent apply topotential actors? How is consent best enacted in this context? There are many suchthorny ethical issues that we are grappling with on the ¯ y. Like others working in this¯ edgling ® eld (Mienczakowski & Morgan, 1998; Saldana, 1998), I feel urgency tosort them through to avoid unnecessary mistakes, unnecessary suffering.
And then there are the worries about logistics. In the middle of the night, I fretabout whether the props will ® t into the storage bin for our ¯ ight to Sudbury. Iwonder who will take Christina’ s role if she is unable to perform in Ottawa asoriginally planned. I ponder how many copies to make of the videotape and howmuch to charge for them. It can go on for hours.
Researcher as One Who Suffers
Recently I was rereading the transcript of an interview done with me in the earlydays of the project. In it, I asked a rhetorical question about the degree to which Iwas a participant in the suffering that others in the project were experiencing. Iwondered how much my researcher role kept me separate. I was unsure of theanswer.
Things have changed, as re¯ ected in a later interview, quoted below.
This project is marinated in suffering. Most people tend to have thisdichotomy between suffering and say, hopeÐ or something else. And theysee suffering as really awful or horrible. But in one sense, it’ s all suffering.Every time we do the scene where Jan breaks down, we run into loss andthe inevitability of grief, right? And there it is again. But there’ s somethingabout letting it be there, and not trying to change it or get away from it,that’ s really very liberating. I think part of what the play does and part ofwhat we manage to do as a group, is to allow necessary suffering, to makespace for it and to recognize its face appearing all the time.
I was speaking about what is required of all those involved with this projectÐ namelyto open themselves to suffering. But I am personally implicated, in ways more directand profound than have been typical in my research activities. I am not sorry aboutthat.
Like the rest of our dramatic group, I do not like to think too much about whatthe future holds. I want Jan and Mary Sue to live forever, want them to defy thebleak odds. Some days, I am very aware of the river of grief that is ¯ owing towardsus.
I recognize that these experiences of suffering I am describing for myself are notunique to research-based theatre or to this particular topic. There are many contextswithin which today’ s qualitative researchers are deliberately opening themselves
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The Challenges of Research-based Theatre 387
emotionally to their work (Church, 1995; Ellis, 1991). Ruth Behar’ s words areparticularly evocative in this regard, `Anthropology that doesn’ t break your heart justisn’ t worth doing anymore’ (1996, p. 177). Drama is one potent vehicle for openingour hearts to the people we work with.
Researcher as Companion
I value collegiality and have enjoyed my involvement with (most) other researchersover the years. But no previous research project has plunged me so far into theintimacies of social relationships as Handle with Care? My usual task-focused waylimits the amount of airtime given to personal material. Research is, after all, aboutgetting things done. But that will not do with these women. They want to knowabout me. And not just the kind of studies I am involved with.
At ® rst I resisted. But as time went on, I found myself moving to meet my newcompanions more on their own terms. Their terms have more to do with friendshipthan collaboration. More to do with sharing than information. More to do withintimacy than boundaries. By their behaviour, this group rejects all conventions ofdistance that are constructed for and by researchers. They have insisted on reciproc-ity, and have challenged and sometimes even manipulated me to embrace theirassumptions. I now believe this approach has been key to our project’ s success.
The day after our stunningly successful debut of Handle with Care?, at the hospitalwhere I work, several members of the group called me. They all said how happy theywere for me, to have taken such an enormous risk with the project and that it paidoff. I was taken aback, not expecting such warmth, such personal attention. It meansa lot. They care about me, just like I care about them.
Researcher as Agent of Social Transformation
Okay, transformation is a pretty strong word. But still, in the last dozen years noneof the projects I have been involved with have come close to having the impact ofHandle with Care?, despite my particular interest in applied and participatoryprojects, some of which have demonstrated bene® cial effects.
Social change is out of fashion in some research circles these days, as postmodernsensibilities lead to queries about the personal and cultural biases endemic to everypossible `improvement’ . Yet, in our production, the very (postmodern) act ofrevealing the different perspectives of ill women, health professionals, and familymembers is immensely meaningful, even `transformative’ , for audience members. Atone performance, an oncologist commented that she had never before realized thather use of the term `failure’ to apply to treatment that wasn’t working could leadsome patients to feel responsible for not doing well. A woman with metastatic breastcancer said that she had thought her son was unusual in his often cruel anddismissive treatment of her, but now she understood that it happens all the time, inall kinds of families. A number of people commented that they had never consideredwhat it would be like for ill people to receive mountains of unsolicited advice fromfriends and family on beating cancer. These kinds of insights reverberate in daily life.
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And as Jim Mienczakowski points out, the implications of such research-derivedinsights go beyond the individual, potentially leading to `the formation of new,dehistoricized, moral agendas for social action’ (1996, p. 451).
The public relations people who we asked to help us make Handle with Care?
visible to the world called the project `soft’ . Not like a cure for cancer, or a newmachine for imaging internal organs. They did not think there would be muchinterest, especially from the media, in qualitative research ® ndings about people’ sillness experiences. They were wrong, and getting more wrong all the time. Peopleare hungry for authentic, non-Hollywood representations of important aspects oftheir lives. And we are making a difference.
Researcher as Conveyor of Hope
Lots of people have told us they were afraid to come to a performance about thescary topic of metastatic breast cancer. But those who do attend Handle with Care?
leave feeling more hopeful than they had expected. And it is not hopeful for miraclecures. It is hopeful about the possibility of living fully, the possibility of humour, ofconnection, and of grace, in the face of enormous dif® culties and limited time.
What generates hope? A while back I received a call for abstracts for a conferencewith hope and illness as its major themes. I wanted to present something aboutHandle with Care? As I re¯ ected on the transcripts from our focus groups of womenwith metastatic breast cancer, I became convinced that hope does not just reside incontent. Hope throws us into the middle of such a thorny topic. It pushes us to makea difference. Hope is in motion. It bounds across the stage. It rolls around insuffering and makes light of it at the same time. Hope is much more than a topic;it lives in creative engagement.
Final Re¯ ections
For research-based theatre to be viable, institutions that employ researchers need to® nd ways of recognizing and rewarding efforts made to increase the relevance (notjust the number) of their projects, as well as efforts to disseminate study ® ndingsbeyond academic audiences. I have never heard of any scholar being awarded tenureon the basis of great dissemination. Why not?!
Research-based theatre holds enormous potential for qualitative researchers. Buthandle it with care. It requires researchers to extend themselves personally, beyondtheir usual roles. And it can take over your life.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Christina Sinding, Fran Turner,Vrenia Ivonoffski, and KathrynChurch for their considerable support, and for their helpful comments on earlierversions of this paper. I am grateful to all the cast members of Handle with Care?,especially Mary Sue Douglas and Jan Livingston, for their many contributions tothis project. Thanks also to the administration at the Toronto± Sunnybrook Regional
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Cancer Centre, notably Mark Henkelman, Carol Sawka, and Kathleen Pritchard,for enthusiastically supporting my ventures into research-based theatre.
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