Making Theatre That Matters: Troubling Subtext, Motive and Intuition

Abstract

This chapter works through Raynor’s efforts to write a fictional play following a series of participative theatre-making workshops with a group of women in the North East of England. She focuses on three concerns to stay with the (constructive) trouble of thinking/doing this situated practice for research: (1) subtext, (2) motive and (3) intuition as a form of critique. Whilst holding onto these concerns, the chapter demonstrates an assemblage of materialities and imaginaries falling together and worked together through playwriting practice. Fragments of discarded script, characters’ thoughts, notes from collaborators, and Raynor’s own memories and reflections are re-formed in a trace of the ‘creative’ process, which seeks to open dialogue with its reader.