Practice as Research

The debate about the research status of practice has become increasingly vigorous in Britain during the period immediately preceding and now following the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. There are career implications for academics in other countries, as well, and the future of the performing arts in the academies is at issue. STP has published, in successive issues (21: 3, 22: 1 and 22: 2) papers by Baz Kershaw, Melissa Trimingham and John Freeman, each offering a particular perspective on the relationship between practice and research. What follows is an edited selection of a sequence of correspondence on the common mail-base dedicated to furthering debates between teachers of Drama and related disciplines. Whilst the contributors are located in the United Kingdom, the debate is without national borders. STP is concerned to open it out to its international readership as well as to house, in the comparative permanence of print, ideas that may otherwise rot in the sin bin of deleted e-mails.