Re-articulating physical pain through artistic performance, performance as a mode of analysis, and performance-making

This project interrogates conventional understandings of physical pain, and argues for an alternative view that sees pain as complexly connected to self and excessive of objective modes of representation. Positing a complex connection between pain and self implies that if the person in pain has any agency in the perception of pain, then that agency is partial. The alternative view of pain also emphasizes the value of balancing objective techniques for representing pain with subjective techniques. By embracing the subject's role in representation, subjective techniques yield information that cannot be attained through objective intents to locate a physical manifestation of pain or to discern the perception of another person's pain.;I advance the alternative view of pain by engaging with three modes of performance. My written scholarship about artistic performances like Well by Lisa Kron, and Sssshh...Succour by Kira O'Reilly shows that artistic performance activates an embodied representational style that differs from objectifying modes of representation because it activates subjective interpretation and interference. My written scholarship about performance-based modes of representation argues that this alternative to objectivity can lend insight into how pain changes over time as it interacts with individual and cultural forces. I further explore the claims of my written scholarship by making artistic performance. Collaboratively generated by two artists and two scientists, the devised performance investigated the relationship between pain and representation by comparing three methods for representing pain. It investigated the relationship between pain and self by staging a story about changing interpretations of a pain experience. Through these methods, my project produced scholarship capable of aiding in the development of a course for healthcare professionals and medical researchers that investigates pain from artistic and scientific perspectives.;My research contributes to theatre and performance studies and to medical humanities by demonstrating how humanistic tools can make conceptual interventions into conventional understandings of physical pain. My conceptual interventions are not intended to provide a basis for therapeutic interventions. Rather, my work intends to expand ways of thinking that currently structure dominant understandings of pain.