To what does it answer? Verbatim and site-specific playwriting

Abstract

Kershaw and Nicholson ask whether “research in theatre and performance does anything different than what goes on in other ‘fields’ where humans desire to better understand why on Earth they are here” (2011, p. 14). This paper responds to this question by charting the development of a new verbatim and site-specific play, Barbara York Main: In Her Own Words and describes the fluid, collective and reflexive processes inherent in the creation and performance of the work. It suggests that as creators, actors and audience members interact with and haunt the script, archive and site, playwriting as research results – not solely in a fixed script or critique, but in a palimpsest of writing and performance. Finally, this paper asks how the open-ended, documented assemblage of script/s, data and understandings, arising from playwriting as research, might be collated and made available for interpretations and imaginings in new contexts.