Theatre as Inclusive Arts-based Research: A Key to Political Art in the Post-democracy?

In this chapter we investigate different approaches to art as research (arts-based) in relation to applied theatre practice and research from a cultural democratic perspective. In particular, we discuss theatre as “inclusive” practice and research and how this relates to different traditions of arts-based research. Based on literature analyses and experiences from Centres of Applied Theatre Research in South Africa and Norway, we unveil some different and dominant traditions of arts-based research that are currently voiced and familiar in Norway and South Africa. We explore four notions of exclusiveness within European notions of “artistic research”: The alternative epistemology, Knowing for the sake of the arts only, The limited artistic context, and Only qualified artists do artistic research. Seen from a different cultural angle, the South African, we find that tendencies of exclusiveness are challenged by different notions of inclusiveness: The role of the arts and its embeddedness in social life, Inter disciplinarity, The extended political and historical context, Embracing intersectionality. As answers to potential accusations of applied theatre art running errands for the liberalist post-democracy, this chapter discusses inclusive arts-based research as a form of cultural praxis that may negotiate paradoxes of post-democracy