Thinking again: enaction as a resource for 'practice as research' in theatre and performance.

This article examines the challenges faced by practitioner-researchers in theatre and performance in accounting for the embodied and emergent qualities of their work within academic research frameworks. It critiques the common strategy in "Practice as Research" (PaR) of defining artistic inquiry against Cartesian dualisms and scientific positivism, arguing instead for interdisciplinary approaches that integrate insights from cognitive science—specifically the enactive approach to cognition, which emphasizes autonomy, sensemaking, emergence, embodiment, and experience. Using Joanne "Bob" Whalley and Lee Miller's 2002 PaR project *Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain* as a case study, the article demonstrates how enaction offers a more robust framework to articulate the dynamic, embodied, and emergent "doing-thinking" inherent in performance practice. The author advocates for practitioner-researchers to adopt such interdisciplinary frameworks to better express the complexities of their work and to move beyond oppositional binaries that have historically constrained artistic research within academia.