The Cambridge Guide to Mixed Methods Research for Theatre and Performance Studies has lifted the curtain on theatre and performance studies (TaPS). In an academic field that often raises the curtain on practice, Tracy C. Davis and Paul Rae have articulated the intellectual threads that shape methodologies from question formation to data collection and analysis.

In the introduction, Davis offers a didactic schematic mapping TaPS’s interdisciplinarity – a resource we wish we had had in graduate school. As she shares, ‘Most students excel at identifying what scholarship argues yet find it difficult to switch gears and focus on how research comes into being’ (p. 1). Davis gives an overview of the field, paired with a rich table that distinguishes theoretical approaches. Reminiscent of The Oxford Handbook for Critical Theory or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Table 1.2: Analytical traditions and their associated methods and methodologies’ parses and categorizes ‘key advocates’ in analytical traditions. The chart is not meant to enforce rigid lines, but rather to afford emerging scholars tools to ‘Mix and Stir’ (p. 3). The organization of the book follows the arc of research projects: ‘Planning’, ‘Doing’, ‘Interpreting’.

‘Planning’ is bookended by two dialogues, first ‘Methods Dialogue: Difference’ with Nicola Mārie Hyland, Brandi Wilkins Catanese and Ben Spatz. The dialogues provide insight into vulnerable origins – what are the commitments one has to a method, and where does a research question renegotiate the method itself? The conceptual questions have material consequences for emerging scholars. One consequence, scale, is tackled across each of the contributing chapters. In ‘Planning a Research Project: Early Steps’, Maggie B. Gale addresses changing archives, furthered by chapters on the multi- and inter- of disciplinary methods from Michael McKinnie and Emine Fişek. A method can also inform ethics. ‘Methods Dialogue: Ethics’ features Patrick Anderson and Natalia Alvarez, scholars who have navigated immersing oneself in communities, mixing ethnographic, participant observation and less conventional methods. To address the trauma, state power and relational web of research as labour, Alvarez notes, ‘Researchers often have to embed themselves in sites wherein their own ideological commitments are profoundly at odds’ (p. 117).

‘Doing’ considers the act of gathering material that is ephemeral, subjective and culturally specific. The first few chapters consider data on opposite ends of a spectrum, from abstract numbers to subjective embodiment. Derek Miller asserts that many scholars already rely on digital tools and suggests that engagement with digital-humanities methods would glean new insights. As a fleshy counterbalance to computational data, Julia M. Ritter offers ‘lived bricolage’ as a methodology that accounts for the improvisation of the immersed spectator. Awo Mana Asiedu’s chapter changes the scale to think not of the individual body, but rather of a collective community response. She emphasizes the importance of developing methods for audience reception that befit the cultural context as she works in the predominantly oral culture of Ghana. The final chapters work together to problematize ‘fieldwork’, as Julius Bautista questions the researcher’s positionality (observing rituals that inflict pain) and Jonas Tinius rejects the idea that there is a standard anthropological method. Tinius redefines ‘fieldwork’ as an ‘approach to working out how to work in a field’ (p. 206; original emphasis).

‘Interpreting’ is also bookended with intimate dialogues between scholars, layering close-reading, performance-as-research and multilingual interpretations. Perhaps the most conceptual and poetic, this section grapples with the art of analysis, especially in Paul Rae’s conclusion, ‘The Aesthetics of Performance Research’. These arts are vulnerable and in flux, as Tony McCaffrey explores and as Adrian Curtin, Prarthana Purkayastha and meLê yamomo discuss in ‘Methodologies Dialogue: Archives and Embodiments’. The section tackles the oft-explored distinctions of archives and bodies, but muddles those sides of a TaPS-shaped coin, with Anke Charton’s non-linear methods for early modern performance. These specificities in encounter continue in the closing dialogue, ‘Complexity’, with Ruthie Abeliovich, Leo Cabranes-Grant and Soo Ryon Yoon. The section discusses the risks of research and the vulnerability inherent in making new knowledge and questioning old systems. As Cabranes-Grant neatly concludes in the final dialogue, ‘one has to learn to not be afraid of mistakes’ (p. 297).

The book’s strengths lie in its provocations for a researcher at an origin point; guidance arrives before the research question emerges. Simultaneously straightforward and thought-provoking, the book offers tangible steps in how to ‘mix and stir’ disciplines. Advanced scholars will gain insight when beginning a project, developing methods or collaborating with colleagues across fields. While the book crosses several interdisciplinary bridges, it might be strengthened through more engagement with the sciences. It would be productive to explore ‘mixing and stirring’, like the chemist in the laboratory whose research clashes with the objectives of the humanities; how can methodologies emerge through such collision? Perhaps current graduate students will take learnings from this book to answer such questions. Overall, the book will equip readers with a methodological framework for getting messy (as TaPS does best) on the ground, in the field and across disciplines.