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Performance Research Methods: Interdisciplinary Methods for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies - cover image

Copyright

Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink; Laura Karreman. Copyright of individual chapters are maintained by the chapter author(s).

Published On

2025-10-24

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-607-3
Hardback978-1-80511-608-0
PDF978-1-80511-609-7
HTML978-1-80511-611-0
EPUB978-1-80511-610-3

Language

  • English

Print Length

478 pages (xxii+456)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 33 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.3" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 37 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.46" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback900g (31.75oz)
Hardback1084g (38.24oz)

Media

Illustrations18
Videos2
Audio1

THEMA

  • JNZ
  • GP
  • AT
  • ABA

BISAC

  • PER011000
  • PER003000
  • SOC024000
  • EDU015000
  • LAN004000

Keywords

  • Performance studies
  • Research methodologies
  • Theatre and dance
  • Practice-based learning
  • Interdisciplinary approaches

Performance Research Methods

Interdisciplinary Methods for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

'Performance Research Methods' is the first comprehensive guide to contemporary methodologies in performance studies, offering a clear and structured overview of the tools currently shaping research in theatre, dance, and performance. While many volumes focus on individual methods, this book uniquely surveys a range of approaches, presenting their historical background, analytical potential, practical application, and interdisciplinary relevance.

Designed with clarity and usability in mind, each chapter follows a consistent structure: introduction, contextual framing, practical application, case study demonstration, interdisciplinary expansion, and suggestions for further reading. This format enables readers to compare methods with ease and understand how each can be adapted to real-world research.

Developed by scholars actively teaching these methods in graduate and undergraduate programs, this hands-on volume addresses a key gap in the field: the lack of explicit, accessible discussions of performance research methods. Responding to the societal, technological, and ecological contexts of contemporary performance, the book makes visible the knowledge practices that often remain confined to the classroom.

Accessible to students, researchers, and arts professionals alike, this volume provides an essential resource for anyone looking to engage critically and creatively with performance in the twenty-first century.

Endorsements

Braiding astute theoretical insights with hard-won practical advice, this book makes an important contribution to the emerging conversation within Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies about research methods and methodologies. Wide-ranging in its overall coverage, each chapter follows a standardised structure, enabling readers to compare different approaches to arrive at an informed understanding of which will be most relevant to their interests. The book will be of value to students and their teachers, as well as researchers focusing on performance in diverse artistic and inter-disciplinary settings.

Prof Paul Rae

The University of Melbourne

Additional Resources

[document]EPUB Accessibility Report

Contents

Introduction

(pp. 1–18)
  • Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink
  • Laura Karreman

1. Concept-Based Analysis

(pp. 21–42)
  • Laura Karreman

2. Dramaturgical Analysis: A Relational Approach

(pp. 43–66)
  • Sigrid Merx
  • Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink

3. Spectatorship Analysis

(pp. 67–84)
  • Maaike Bleeker

4. Movement Analysis

(pp. 85–106)
  • Andrew Fuhrmann
  • Lise Uytterhoeven
  • Rachel Fensham

5. Dance Analysis

(pp. 107–124)
  • Sarah Whatley

6. Music Always Does Something: Analysing Musical Theatre

(pp. 125–144)
  • Millie Taylor

7. A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Listening

(pp. 145–166)
  • Pieter Verstraete

8. Discourse Analysis

(pp. 169–186)
  • Sruti Bala

9. Creating Art Ecologies through Contextual Analysis

(pp. 187–208)
  • Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink

10. Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Performance

(pp. 209–228)
  • Dick Zijp

11. Tracing Histories: An Archaeological Approach

(pp. 229–246)
  • Evelyn Wan

12. Archival Research Expanded: Bodily Archives and Embodied Fabulation

(pp. 247–268)
  • Lisa Skwirblies

13. Intersectionality

(pp. 271–292)
  • Anika Marschall

14. Personal Narratives and Social Constructs through Autoethnography in Performance Studies

(pp. 293–310)
  • Wigbertson Julian Isenia

15. Autoethnography in Performance Studies: The Performativity of Queer Parenting

(pp. 311–334)
  • Fabiola Camuti
  • Annemijn van der Schaar

16. Practice-led Research: Transversal Ways of Sensing/Knowing

(pp. 337–358)
  • Konstantina Georgelou

17. Affective Attunement: Mapping the Invisible

(pp. 359–386)
  • Theron Schmidt

18. Doing Performance Philosophy: Thinking alongside Performance

(pp. 387–412)
  • Laura Cull Ă“ Maeillorca

19. Hyphenated Thinking in Performance Processes: Thinking through Performance-pedagogical Entanglements with More-than-human Matter

(pp. 413–438)
  • Christel Stalpaert

Contributors

Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink

(editor)
Assistant Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the Media and Culture Studies department at Utrecht University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9202-5277

Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink is an Assistant Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the Media and Culture Studies Department of Utrecht University. She was the programme coordinator of the Master’s programme in Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy (2014-2024) and teaches in various BA and MA programmes. Her research interests include the intersection of dramaturgy and scenography, performance philosophy, ecology and new materialism. She is the author of Nomadic Theatre: Mobilizing Theory and Practice on the European Stage (Bloomsbury 2019) and has contributed to (among others) The Routledge Companion to Contemporary European Theatre and Performance (2023), Rancière and Performance (Rowman & Littlefield 2021) and Thinking Through Theatre and Performance (Bloomsbury 2019) and Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere (Routledge 2018). She currently works on a book on simulation, speculation and futurity in contemporary European dramaturgy (with Sigrid Merx). She is a co-founder of Platform-Scenography and incidentally works as an artistic coach and dramaturgy adviser.

Laura Karreman

(editor)
Associate Professor in Media and Performance Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5214-9213

Laura Karreman is an Associate Professor in Media and Performance Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She teaches in the MA program Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy and the Research MA Media, Art and Performance Studies (MAPS). She is also the programme coordinator of the MAPS programme. She researches the role of embodied knowledge in dance transmission practices, the role of digitization in performance archives, and epistemological questions that relate to new notions of performance knowledge emerging from developments in the area of AI and Human-Robot interaction. Within the research group Transmission in Motion of the Department of Media and Culture Studies (UU), she relates to topics such as dramaturgy, somatechnics and mobilizing the archive. In her current research she continues to investigate the rapid growth of motion capture as a tool for movement research and animation in order to critically evaluate the cultural and ethical implications of such practices, which now often remain invisible. She is co-editor of the volume Performance and Posthumanism: Staging Prototypes of Composite Bodies (Palgrave Macmillan 2021). Other recent publications include the book chapters “Breathing Matters: Breath as Dance Knowledge” in Futures of Dance Studies (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) and “How does motion capture mediate dance?” in Contemporary Choreography: A critical reader (Routledge, 2017), and a chapter on “Cultural Dreams of Datafied Bodies” in the Routledge Companion on Performance and Technology (forthcoming). In 2024, she was conference director of the 9th International Conference on Movement and Computing (MOCO) at Utrecht University.