Critical Plays: Embodied Research for Social Change

Critical Plays is the systematic study of one (fictional) classroom culture populated by six students and their two professors, imaginatively conceived from interviews, experience, observation and thematic analysis. This play-as-research-text aims to provide an encounter both creative and scholarly for readers. The characters who populate it are drawn from the authors' experiences as researchers, teachers, and performance makers and come from the fields of health, performance studies, education and leadership studies. This text is a must-read for qualitative researchers and students of health sciences, communications, interdisciplinary ethnography, rhetoric, education, sociology, drama and theatre arts. This text highlights new methodological pathways in a rapidly-evolving global research landscape. It also poses serious questions about education, identity and creativity that readers can reflect on. Written with humor and passion, students will enjoy reading excerpts aloud in class, or on their own. This play can be read or performed purely for pleasure, or used as a class text in courses that address qualitative research methods, performance studies, education, teacher training, pedagogy and curriculum, arts-informed inquiry and research ethics.