Ethical Implications of Using Research-Based Theater to Challenge Hegemonic Narratives About Mental Health

Abstract

Many health researchers have started to see the benefits of partnering with playwrights to use theater as a tool to analyze and present complex findings. Such projects about mental health, however, remain few and far between and are especially fraught. This article argues that research-based theater can be an ideal tool for exploring and sharing counter-hegemonic “mad stories”—especially if the plays created can help interrupt, among other things, problematic biomedical narratives about individualized approaches to supporting those who are suffering. This article also incorporates excerpts from the script the author wrote as part of her doctoral thesis project about military trauma to highlight how, guided by mad theory and mad aesthetics, she has creatively woven some of the weightiest ethical conundrums encountered during the research and development process into the play itself, so that, their nuance and magnitude become a critical component of the story being presented.