Writing Up Practice-As-Research Innovations

Dr David Megarrity

The aim of this presentation: to profile a selection of research projects with a creative focus in order to extract some useful principles,

practices and problems

(yours as well as mine)

[predecessors]

Research problem

Potential Destinations/Outcomes

Research Statement, Design & Resourcing

Research activity (Creative Practice, Documentation,

analysis, writing up/editing/submissions/changes/rejections/publications)

Actual Destinations/Outcomes /Outputs

[descendants]

Onstage Couplings: Making beautiful music with the male/ female comic duo [NTRO & TRO]

Tyrone and Lesley in a Spot: illuminating creative emergency in Composed Theatre [NTRO & TRO]

Recording Optimism [NTRO]

The Holidays [NTRO]

Pennies Falling [TRO]

Onstage Couplings: Making beautiful music with the male/ female comic duo [NTRO & TRO]

Bridget Boyle and David Megarrity as Warmwaters, 2017

*[y]ou might surmise that the male-female dynamic militates against comedy – but for the many examples throughout the history of sitcom and rom-com that disprove the idea. … In every other artform, boy meets girl

is box-office gold; it's plain bizarre that it so seldom happens in live comedy. (Logan 2011)

2012 > 5 Creative practice > Performance

Recalibration & refocus & [draft] research statement*

Research & Writing/ 2016 Conference Presentation/Research/Writing

2017 Submission> Rejection (X2) = one more shot

22nd AUSTRALASIAN HUMOUR STUDIES NETWORK CONFERENCE 2016 6-8 February, Women’s College, University of Sydney UNFUNNY: THE LIMITS OF HUMOUR

Journal Submissions: Popular Music and Society, Humor

• Collaborative creative practice AND academic research and writing

• Recalibration and refocusing from Composed theatre to Gender in Musical Comedy

• The role of the conference presentation : peers offer support and new perspectives

Tyrone and Lesley in a Spot: illuminating creative emergency in Composed Theatre [NTRO & TRO]

Tyrone and Lesley in a Spot is a unique piece of theatre. It’s a performance that knows it’s a performance, it doesn’t try to hide anything… The two men combined music with moving images to create a cabaret show that is a little bit absurd and very charming. …the two were just pure magic together… it would be a sin to miss it. thecreativeissue

2015-6 Creative Practice [writing] seeking support/funding Creative practice [creative development/production/journaling/documentation/blogging/review]

Proposal to special issue Studies in Musical Theatre Accepted with changes writing [7998] rejection submission (Journal of Artistic Research)Rejection e-prints

• Rejection is good

Recording Optimism [NTRO]

UKULELE RECORD OF THE YEAR Optimism is the fifth album from Australian uke and double bass duo Tyrone and Lesley and their best yet. It perfectly combines

their highly textured, deftly played music with their humorous and silly lyrics. And the album’s overture Ukulele Sunrise is the best opening on any album I heard all year. It’s great to see people keeping the ukulele weird. Ukehunt

2015-6 Creative practice [writing/rehearsal/performance/pre-production]

Identification of focus, research around the topic

[draft] research statement

2017 Creative practice [studio recording] journaling, blogging, documentation

Crowdfunding

Publication

reviews

redrafting of research statement on e-prints.

Internal documentation and analysis.

• The role of the research statement: isolating the problem and the research methods, as well as keywords. Video documentation: enables the translation of research statement/problem into questions which generate data.

• Documentation: blogging (studio diary? No. Who cares?) Master perspectives: Writing Optimism, Recording optimism. Assists in seeking and writing up critical incidents, and finding ways of expressing them to a disinterested reader.

• Peer review: adding to research statement on e-prints

The Holidays [NTRO]

http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/tall-tales-and-true

Creative Practice [writing]

Submission to Rodney Seaborn Playwright’s Award (& others)

shortlisting

Research statement

creative practice [documentation/blogging]

Submission

Longlisting

Pitch

Finalist

Creative practice (Writing/Creative development)

?

• the importance of gatekeepers and the equivalence to peer review

Pennies Falling [TRO]

http://jackieulmer.com/a-penny-from-the-universe/

Problem/Focus

>seeking internal funding> Devising Methodology

> practice & documentation

analysis, writing up (collaborative)

> acquittal

finding funding gone

chasing funding

co-writing

Submission

Rejection

new submission

acceptance (with changes)

writing changes > final submission > publication

Pennies Falling: Collaborative rewards in a state of creative emergency in NJ – Drama Australia National Journal (Vol 42, Issue 1)

• Sites of research can sometimes be where you least expect them, and solve some very practical problems.

[predecessors]

Research problem

Potential Destinations/Outcomes

Research Statement, Design & Resourcing

Research activity (Creative Practice, Documentation,

analysis, writing up/editing/submissions/changes/rejections/publications)

Actual Destinations/Outcomes /Outputs

[descendants]

Re-cap

• Collaborative creative practice AND academic research and writing

• Recalibration and refocusing: emergence

• The role of the conference presentation : peers offer support and new perspectives

• Rejection is good

• The role of the research statement: isolating the problem and the research methods, as well as keywords.

• Multimodal documentation: enables the translation of research statement/problem into questions which generate data.

• internal documentation and analysis is different from what’s shared in the public domain

• the importance of gatekeepers and the equivalence to peer review

• Sites of research can sometimes be where you least expect them, and solve some very practical problems

Closing notes:• Where’s your energy? Be honest about that.

• Artistic Research, in whichever manner you pursue it, is very complex. It’s almost double the work you’d do anyway, just making the art.

• Writing it into a paper requires a kind of simplicity that sometimes doesn’t ‘sit’ will with what you find most stimulating about making art. Sort out methodology – all this is newish, and you have a contribution to make. (PAR, PLR, AR, RLP)

• Epistemologically adrift? Be clear about what field you’re working in, and select a few possible journals or outlets that might be interested in your work. Spend a day doing it, and ‘up’ your likelihood of being published – you may well stumble upon a special edition with a topic or focus that relates to your practice – also a style guide derived from the work of other artistic researchers that may have investigated similar territory- how have they written about practice, what can you glean, what can you improve?

• Decide what the central challenge of the work is, the problem you’re trying to solve, and capture it in a research statement, however rough - keep returning to it and redraft if necessary.

• Documentation: become your own archivist. Be assiduous.

• Annoying to have to read in detail about some hokey old show from 1985 in order to gather the findings of an article. It’s possible nobody cares about your research – not even you, once the creative bit’s over and done with. ‘Go there’, but come back. Capture what it’s like, but don’t take your readers right back into the thick of it. Tell us what you were looking for, and what you found, and how it may be of use. That’s why you went there in the first place: to come back, changed.

• Build in capacity for emergency – new discoveries. You can only do this if you reflect both in and on action. Remember too, bad art can equal good data.

• Video and image: capture more than you need – you’re always looking for a fast-track, short circuit, looking for iconic images that not only stand for themselves, but contain key elements of the process or product: framed fragments. We’re already aware that art work that exists in the live domain will die in captivity – therefore it’s doubly important to frame their remains clearly. Some more progressive research outlets are interested in multimodal presentations.

• Blogging is useful but make it cumulative, rather than serial. It’s a place to rehearse findings.

Build reflection and writing up time into your plan. Draw on your networks and peers. Work collaboratively when you can, with people who both SAY THEY’RE GOING TO do the work, and ACTUALLY WILL do the work.

You’re generating a body of work. There are connections within and across your practice that maybe you only have inklings of – they’ll manifest more forcefully over time if you curate your own artistry and research.

Before you can discard a verse, you have to write it.. I can’t discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to

catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines. You can’t discover that in the raw.

Leonard Cohen (in Zollo, 337)

https://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Megarrity,_David.html