Heavenly acts: aspects of performance through an interdisciplinary lens

In the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty first, a substantial amount of thought and writing in a range of disciplines has been devoted to exploring areas of human experience and activity that can be defined as performance-oriented. This early research has evolved to the extent that there are now a number of distinct but related threads in evidence that represent different disciplines, diverse settings and a range of methodological approaches all purporting to treat performance and its salience in human life and society. A common theme uniting all these threads is the nexus formed by performance and religion. Early anthropological gaze was often on ritual and ceremony. More recent activity explores how performance as a human and social activity (whether that performance is musical, linguistic, theatrical, identity-oriented or ritualised) informs and is informed by religious experience and activity. This activity has been fuelled significantly by the impact of globalising processes as cultures, faiths and languages encounter one another in dynamic and fluid settings in the present age.

Each of these threads has either an established or developing position in its own field and the proposed network seeks to gather researchers from a wide range of disciplines all of whom are pursuing lines of academic enquiry that converge around, broadly defined, 'performance'. This emerging group of sociolinguists, ethnomusicologists, educationists, anthropologists, social psychologists and scholars of religious studies and theatre studies understand performance and aspects of performance as central or as important to their accounts of religious devotional practices, again very broadly defined.

It is now timely and appropriate that a much wider cross-disciplinary approach to this topic is established than has happened hitherto. This international network will, therefore, for the first time, gather scholars researching in these different areas to share the insights and expertise they have of their own fields, to explore the potential there evidently is for innovative cooperation and collaboration across these disciplines, to seek to develop both new theory and methodology in a trans-disciplinary manner and to make an important contribution to knowledge about performance in religious contexts. Furthermore, with these different researchers carrying out their studies within and across a variety of faith traditions, the network has an explicit inter- and cross-faith dimension that is of immediate and obvious interest and importance to non-academic beneficiaries who will use the network to further their own agendas in respect of inter-faith cooperation, understanding, collaboration and cultural enrichment. The contribution to social cohesion and cultural understanding in this respect is potentially significant.

This network will seek to: share its particular findings and insights; highlight mutual areas of interest; establish common understandings and principles; crucially, break down those disciplinary boundaries which have hitherto hampered such common understandings; and forge important trans-disciplinary practices that unify and align rather than separate and divide. We also intend the research network to have a significant public face providing a means for performers, audiences and practitioners to interact and link with academic researchers as well as showcase their own practices.

In practical terms, we envisage the funding, which is for two years, will support and facilitate a number of seminars (including a colloquium), workshops, public-facing showcasing events, academic exchanges (including publications) and the creation of an online resource to showcase the network and its research. It is intended that the network will consequently be better placed to apply for further funding to develop substantive trans-disciplinary research in the future.

Who will benefit from this research?

The focus for this network, performance and religion, lends itself well to the involvement of non-academic beneficiaries. The valorisation of performance-oriented religious practice provided by the research represented in this network means that shared insights and experiences arising from the work of the network will be shared with and often co-constructed with participants in religious practice.

We envisage principal impact to involve:

As so much of the research of this network involves young people of school age, performance-oriented practices related to schools (both mainstream and supplementary sectors), teachers and pupils will be impacted upon positively.

Inter-faith organisations by their nature will serve as logical partners for the activities of the network and will have their own work enhanced by involvement.

Religious-based organisations, too, are a natural partner for the project and will participate as performers, as audiences and as contexts and sources for performance-oriented practices.

Arts-based organisations with an interest in and experience of performance-related practices will, more generally, benefit from the insights and experience of the network.

We envisage secondary impact to involve:

Policymakers with a brief for community and social cohesion will be interested in a project such as this one which has an overt aim to bring together researchers, performers and religious organisations from a variety of faith and cultural backgrounds.

How will they benefit from this research?

The primary areas of impact of this research project are cultural enrichment for those taking part and for the networks, communities and organisations involved. Equally importantly, the multifaith nature of the project will impact on drivers for the improvement of social cohesion. A secondary area of impact will be influence on policymakers focusing on social and community cohesion matters.

More specifically, the project aims at the following:

1. Performers will form a central part of the research journey from Phase 0 to post-project activities.
2. As a significant element of the performances being researched involves young people, schools, teachers and pupils will (a) have the opportunity to showcase and share their involvement in performance with one another and (b) extend and enrich their own awareness and understanding of performance beyond their immediate experience.
3. The multifaith nature of the focus of research network will be of major interest and importance to inter-faith organisations. As the network brings together research from a variety of religions and performance traditions within those religions, inter-faith organisations will benefit from the insights and experiences shared across the network and have the opportunity to broaden and deepen their own remit for inter-faith processes and activities.
4. Individual religious organisations, including places of worship, will engage with this project with a view to sharing and showcasing their performance-oriented practices, and an opportunity to explain and describe more broadly with their communities and the general public the place, meaning and importance of such practices. They will also benefit from identifying how their own practices share common characteristics with different faith traditions. This will serve as a means of deepening and broadening their own experience and mutual understanding.
5. More broadly, arts organisations with a focus on performance will also have their activity enhanced by an engagement with this project which, though focusing on performance in a religious context, will have important implications for performance more generally.
6. We would expect policymakers, local and national, to be interested in the activity of this network and seek to draw on its outcomes in the formation and development of policy related to matters of social and community cohesion.