NiTRO + Creative Matters

Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

PRACTICE-BASED TOOLS FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

  • BREE GLASBERGEN
SUPPORTING WOMEN TO CLAIM THEIR VOICES POST-VIOLENCE — Can creative self-expression support women to gain or claim their voices? This research explores the dialogic nature of self-reflective questions in oracle cards as provocations for theatre and investigates if and how these provocations can assist women with self-expression. A sample deck of oracle cards – including self-reflective questions – were crafted and then tested as provocations for playwriting.

These cards were used in practice-based research to explore how they may elicit vocality, employing practice-led research as a methodology and playwriting as a method. Through the creative process, themes centred around gender-based violence emerged. These practice-led insights merge gender-based violence’s loss of identarian agency and research on vocal studies to provide a possible practice-based avenue to support women to recover their voice-as-agency post-violence.

Keywords playwriting, oracle cards, practice-led research, voice-as-agency, gender-based violence, creative practice research

DOI 10.65289/creativematters.2025.10.11

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Bree is a Master of Creative Arts Candidate at the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC). Her creative practice-based research centres around inclusive ways to capture and nurture women’s voices through performance and writing. This work was supported by the Agnes Whitten Fellowship through Fellowship Fund Inc., Queensland. Bree’s research passions include belonging, interactive performance, and voice-as-agency.

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