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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Alice CreeORCiD, Dr Hannah West
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This article considers what theatre-as-method can bring to research in Critical Military Studies (CMS). Drawing on examples from our participatory online theatre-based project with UK military spouses, we explore how the practice and process of theatre-making can help to harness the critical capacity of military and militarised subjects, and centre the fluidity and liveliness of military power. Participatory theatre-as-method can help to invoke a collective critical voice rooted in shared experience, animate in new ways the tensions between subjects and power, and recast research participants as artists with the capacity to shape their own conditions of visibility. Furthermore, as we show through our collaboratively written and produced play Magnolia Walls, theatre makes possible the practice of critique and even disruption in the very doing of the research itself. The paper concludes by arguing that creative methods more broadly can help us think anew about what it means to do CMS research, and in so doing contributes to the growing body of literature that looks to creativity as method and mode of analysis for understanding military phenomena (see Cree 2023; Woodward et al., forthcoming). While the research at the heart of this article is about military spouses, we argue that the capacity of theatre-as-method to shed new light on military power and to do critique more effectively has applicability that spans across CMS, political geography, international politics, and beyond.
Author(s): Cree ASJ, West H
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Critical Military Studies
Year: 2025
Pages: epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 29/10/2025
Acceptance date: 23/10/2025
Date deposited: 27/10/2025
ISSN (print): 2333-7486
ISSN (electronic): 2333-7494
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2025.2581865
DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2025.2581865
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