Arts Dialogue
On April 12, 2026, I presented my developing research to the scholarly community of RESCH-GE 2140: Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry in the International Education Program at NYU Steinhardt, taught by Professor Heddy Lahmann. The presentation was a formally designated scholarly event, scheduled at the beginning of the semester and prepared over approximately one month. The audience included Professor Lahmann, four doctoral students including myself, and several master's students, representing a scholarly community with serious engagement in qualitative research methods and educational inquiry.
The formal presentation was also the culmination of an ongoing process of peer and faculty feedback throughout the course. The four doctoral students presenting developing research were regularly paired with one another through course assignments, class discussions, and check-ins during the month leading to the presentations. These exchanges gave me opportunities to articulate where I was in the development of the study, receive questions from colleagues, and continue refining the project before presenting it formally. Because I was completing the course at the doctoral level within a class that also included master’s students, Professor Lahmann provided additional doctoral-level guidance and assignments, including individual consultation about the questions I was considering and how I might approach studying them. I also met with her via Zoom before the presentation to discuss the developing project and receive feedback on its direction. The Arts Dialogue therefore represented not only a final presentation of my thinking at that stage, but the culmination of a process in which that thinking had already been shared, questioned, and revised in conversation with faculty and peers.
The presentation centered on my developing research question: How do actors in higher education training programs describe and make meaning of their well-being throughout the rehearsal and performance process? I moved from motivation and scholarly context through research design and into emerging findings and implications. I opened by establishing both the scholarly gap and the practical urgency of the inquiry, arguing that existing research largely centers professional actors and examines well-being through quantitative measures, while considerably less qualitative research attends to how actors in training environments describe and make meaning of their experiences. I then presented my theoretical framework, grounding the study in a constructivist orientation toward meaning-making and identifying Hochschild's theory of emotional labor as the primary analytical lens. The methodology I outlined is a qualitative, multi-method design incorporating semi-structured interviews as the primary data collection method, self-study as a means of incorporating my own positionality reflexively, and arts-based research to access dimensions of actor experience that language alone may not fully capture. I also shared preliminary findings from early interview work, identifying five emerging themes: the institutional normalization of harm, racialized experience in training, the absence of structured well-being support, the distinction between discomfort and harm, and self-medication as coping. I closed by introducing Performing with Care: The Ritual of the Run as the practice-based work that will be placed in conversation with the developing research. [See Appendix: Qualitative Research Presentation, April 2026]
The research I presented reflects the development of my practice-led inquiry while also incorporating arts-based research into the study’s methodological design. The research question itself emerges from my own embodied experience as a performer, clinician, and educator navigating the very spaces I am proposing to study. The inquiry is practice-led in that my existing practitioner knowledge is not bracketed from the research but positioned as integral to it. The multi-method design explicitly incorporates arts-based research as one of three methodological approaches, recognizing that actor experience is embodied and performative and that some of what actors carry through a rehearsal and performance process may not surface through verbal accounts alone. And Performing with Care, introduced during the presentation as the practice-based work connected to the inquiry, draws on theatrical forms including ritual, embodiment, ensemble, and the arc of the production process.
The feedback that followed the presentation was thoughtful and has continued to shape my thinking. Professor Lahmann provided written feedback affirming that my practical and scholarly motivation were clear and well-defined and that I had effectively established why training environments matter as the specific site of inquiry. She noted that I had connected the normalization of practices within training to their downstream effects on the profession, which she identified as central to the significance of the project. She raised two questions worth examining: how actors as a population might be distinguished from performing artists more broadly in the existing literature, and how Performing with Care functions within the research and contributes to the field. Student feedback focused on what structural support systems exist for actors within training programs, my argument that actors are largely dependent on whatever institutional resources are available without dedicated performer-centered support, and the relationship between what gets normalized in training and what gets carried into professional life. [See Appendix: Faculty Feedback, Professor Lahmann]
I took this feedback seriously and it has informed how I am developing the project. In response to Professor Lahmann's question about Performing with Care, I shared the full curriculum document directly, which opened further conversation about the relationship between the qualitative inquiry and the practice-based intervention. That exchange clarified something important: Performing with Care precedes the study and will be placed in dialogue with what the research reveals, rather than functioning as a research instrument within the study itself. Her question about distinguishing actors from performing artists more broadly has sharpened how I articulate the population and scope of the study and strengthened my argument for why higher education training environments specifically represent a significant and underexamined site of inquiry.
This Arts Dialogue demonstrates evolving leadership in the field in several ways. Presenting original research to a scholarly community, inviting critical feedback, and remaining accountable to that feedback are practices central to how scholars develop and contribute to their fields. By centering actors’ own accounts of their well-being and positioning that knowledge as generative for both scholarship and practice, this research contributes to an emerging conversation about what institutional care looks like within training environments and what it means for a field to take that question seriously. The Arts Dialogue also helped me identify both what is becoming clear in my developing scholarship and what still requires further investigation. It affirmed the significance of centering actor experience while pushing me to more precisely distinguish actors from performing artists more broadly within the existing literature and articulate the relationship between the research and Performing with Care. As I move toward formally proposing the culminating study, those questions will continue to shape the development of the research and the practice-based work.
References
Brott, G., Wilson, C., & Brooker, J. (2025). A qualitative study into the psychological effects of acting work among Australian-based actors. Australian Journal of Psychology, 77(1), 2486775.
Hartley, J. (2024). Towards a trauma informed pedagogy in actor training: Knowledge and agency. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 15(2), 143-157.
Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press.
Robb, A. E., Due, C., & Venning, A. (2018). Exploring psychological wellbeing in a sample of Australian actors. Australian Psychologist, 53(1), 77-86.
Szabó, M., Seton, M., Maxwell, I., & Cunningham, M. L. (2022). Psychological well-being of Australian actors and performing artists: Life satisfaction and negative affect. Medical Problems of Performing Artists, 37(2), 106-117.