Joe Norris, professor of Dramatic Arts, has published a new book, Playbuilding as qualitative research: A participatory arts-based approach. The 2009 book is published by Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
The book is for both art-based researchers and research-informed artists, exploring the theatrical genre known as Collective Creation, or Playbuilding. Performers generate data around chosen topics from addiction and sexuality to qualitative research by compiling scenes from their disparate voices. Audience members become involved in the investigation, and the performed scenes do not end the conversation but challenge and extend it. Through discussion and audience participation, the process examines how knowledge is defined and how data is mediated.
Joe Norris was a co-founder and the artistic director of the Mirror Theatre, a social issues focused touring theatre troupe, and he co-edited the book Learning to Teach Drama: A Case Narrative Approach. He has served as the Theatre-in-Education Network Chair and Research Network Chair for the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. After 20 years in faculties of Education, Joe now makes his home in a Faculty of Humanities teaching Drama in Education and Applied Theatre in the Department of Dramatic Arts of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.