Performing Arts Laboratory As a Social Research Practice. Issues and Problems

When Othello kills Desdemona, the audience cries and is moved. Yet, on stage there is no real murder, it is fiction, and everyone knows it. What happens is a relationship between physical and effectual-phenomenal reality (Böhme, 2001), in which perceived reality produces physical effects, following dynamics that, with the Neue Phänomenologie (NP) (Schmitz, 2009) we could call atmospheric.

This contribution aims to bring an empirical experience in which I used a Performing Arts Laboratory (PAL) as a social research method, to investigate the relationship between these two types of reality in a specific social group with disabilities, applying the NP to the social theory of emotions. In the first part, I will highlight the reasons why I used a PAL as an empirical tool - such as the deep methodological reflection required by following a neophenomenological approach - and also compare with other cases in which theatrical practices have been used in research, such as the Forum Theater.

In the second part, I will describe my research experience, whose core is a PAL dedicated to people with different visual abilities (blind and partially sighted), to which I have added interviews and shadowing. I will bring as an example some extracts from the field diary, and some testimonies that emerged during the interviews following the laboratory period.

In the third part, resuming the theoretical discourse, I will highlight some methodological issues that emerged during the practice and some strengths that testify to the effectiveness of a PAL as a tool for social research. In particular, resuming some theoretical issues specific to NP, such as the concepts of lived-body, and involuntary vital presence, I will focus on the role and training of the researcher who follows a neophenomenological theoretical approach and his relationship with those who participate in the research.