Copyright
Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink; Laura Karreman. Copyright of individual chapters are maintained by the chapter author(s).Published On
2025-10-24ISBN
Language
- English
Print Length
478 pages (xxii+456)Dimensions
Weight
Media
OCLC Number
1547601119LCCN
2025465569THEMA
- JNZ
- GP
- AT
- ABA
BISAC
- PER011000
- PER003000
- SOC024000
- EDU015000
- LAN004000
LCC
- PN1576
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
Contents
Introduction
(pp. 1–18)- Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink
- Laura Karreman
Concept-Based Analysis
(pp. 21–42)- Laura Karreman
Dramaturgical Analysis: A Relational Approach
(pp. 43–66)- Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink
- Sigrid Merx
Spectatorship Analysis
(pp. 67–84)- Maaike Bleeker
Movement Analysis
(pp. 85–106)- Andrew Fuhrmann
- Lise Uytterhoeven
- Rachel Fensham
Dance Analysis
(pp. 107–124)- Sarah Whatley
Music Always Does Something: Analysing Musical Theatre
(pp. 125–144)- Millie Taylor
A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Listening
(pp. 145–166)- Pieter Verstraete
Discourse Analysis
(pp. 169–186)- Sruti Bala
Creating Art Ecologies through Contextual Analysis
(pp. 187–208)- Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink
Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Performance
(pp. 209–228)- Dick Zijp
Tracing Histories: An Archaeological Approach
(pp. 229–246)- Evelyn Wan
- Lisa Skwirblies
Intersectionality
(pp. 271–292)- Anika Marschall
Personal Narratives and Social Constructs through Autoethnography in Performance Studies
(pp. 293–310)- Wigbertson Julian Isenia
- Fabiola Camuti
- Annemijn van der Schaar
Practice-led Research: Transversal Ways of Sensing/Knowing
(pp. 337–358)- Konstantina Georgelou
Affective Attunement: Mapping the Invisible
(pp. 359–386)- Theron Schmidt
Doing Performance Philosophy: Thinking alongside Performance
(pp. 387–412)- Laura Cull Ó Maeillorca
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)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)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.