Law’s a Drag: Forum Theatre and Research Principles Lab

Researchers Dr James Greenwood-Reeves and Dr Rosie Fox are hosting their next extravaganza event on collaborative socio-legal research with drag artists!

On Friday 4 April, Law’s a Drag are hosting their next event, a forum theatre and research principles lab. 

Researchers Dr James Greenwood-Reeves and Dr Rosie Fox (both of the School of Law) will be joined by fellow LAD co-researchers Joy Twemlow (University of Durham) and Jean Evans (drag artist AJ-47) in running the event. It will involve two projects, both of which aim to tell us more about how we can do ethical, effective, and impactful research with drag artists:

Schedule

10:00 – 13:00: Forum Theatre workshop
Spearheaded by drag artist and forum theatre expert Jean Evans, this workshop aims to examine the difficulties artists may experience when collaborating with academic researchers. The LAD team will perform a short theatrical piece on the subject, before inviting attendees – artists and academics alike – to step in and improvise how they would resolve conflicts in the piece instead!

13:00 – 16:00: Research Principles Lab
The LAD team will run through a series of creative exercises with artists and academics, in order to produce principles for how LAD will engage in future research, covering ethics, methods, collaborations, and research outputs. This event is funded by the SLSA Impact Grant Scheme. 

Who Can Attend

The event is open to drag artists (queens, kings, and nonbinary artists) and academics (regardless of discipline), interested in participating and in sharing thoughts about ethical and impactful research with drag artists. There is no expectation for the artists to be in drag while they are attending. 

Contact Us

To get involved or for any questions, you can get in touch by: 

• Filling in the Law’s a Drag contact form

• Emailing J.R.H.Greenwood-Reeves@leeds.ac.uk 

 FAQs:

1. If I can’t attend both events, throughout the day, can I attend one of these events but not the other? 
   Yes. If you can only attend the forum theatre workshop, or just the research principles lab, that is fine, just let us know. 

2. How much are you paying artists for attending? 
   We can pay up to 8 artists a rate £30 per hour, for 6 hours of their time (totalling £180 each). Regrettably we cannot cover additional travel expenses on top of this fee.
    
3. How do I get to the Liberty Building?
   You can find it here. Access information, including accessibility information, can be found here. 
    
4. What is expected of me at the forum theatre workshop?
   We will be performing the initial forum theatre play for around 10 minutes, during which all you need do is watch. After that, we re-run the play a few times, allowing audience members to step in as one of the characters to demonstrate how they would solve problems and conflicts. You don’t need to step in if you don’t want to, but we highly encourage you to do so. It’s fun, safe, and exciting! 
    
5. Will the forum theatre workshop be recorded? 
   We will not record video of the audience participation in the forum theatre workshop. We will however be recording audio of the performances, and transcribing the dialogue and discussions after the event, as part of an ongoing research project. All transcriptions will be anonymised, and the original audio files will be destroyed after transcription. Attendees will be provided with information sheets and consent will be sought to record audio before the event. 
    
6. What will happen in the research principles lab? 
   We will be running a series of short creative exercises, to get participants to help come up with ethical principles, research methods, and research outputs, that they want to see from LAD in future research. 
    
7. How will this event create research principles that will represent the views of artists? 
   As well as having our artist attendees participating and providing their insight, we are also going to present the day’s research principles to the wider LAD network of drag artists for their consideration and feedback. After this consultation process, we will implement the decided research principles. These will remain subject to review by the artists in the network, so that they can be updated to reflect the needs of our drag community as we move forward.