by Jo Rush

What have theatre and engineering got to do with each other? It’s hard to see any obvious connection on the surface and I certainly didn’t spot it myself at first. However, both engineering and theatre ask questions about our world. Engineers figure out how things work, finding practical solutions and creating innovations that make the most of scientific discoveries. In theatre we try to figure ourselves out and understand our place in the world. 

And this is what brought us to our concept for this project – if engineering acts as a vehicle through which knowledge and applications are generated and theatre is a vehicle for communication, then by bringing these two disciplines together we can create understanding. 

But what does that mean practically? Well, back in 2012 a chance conversation between myself and researchers from the School of Engineering caused us to stumble upon an interesting problem. Academics had completed exciting and important specialist research, but they were struggling to make this research heard outside of the usual channels of conferences, journals, and already-informed audiences of fellow academics. A throwaway comment about how I “should make a play about it” led me to ask a simple question: “what impact does this research have on an average member of the public?” I then began to use my background as a theatre-maker to create ideas for how a theatre production could explain and embody this research to make a public audience (without an engineering background) really care about its impact. 

This led to the creation and performance of ‘Design by Disaster’ by Dave Fargnoli – a play that questions our changing awareness of fire safety design, society’s desire for answers from engineers only when things go wrong, and an engineer’s responsibility to make their voice heard. The play was performed as part of the School of Engineering’s Eng150 celebrations in 2018. 

Design by Disaster (2018 - Eng150 celebration) - © Sally Jubb Photography

After the successful process of creating this work directly inspired by research, the School of Engineering and Braw Fox Theatre began shaping the outline for the project that is now CreateWorks. We looked at what theatre and engineering have to offer one another and how this could improve communication between engineers and the public and the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenious Award generously agreed to fund our project. 

Our hypothesis is this:

• Through engaging in a creative writing process, engineers can:
  • express their complex research to wider audiences by humanising its context
  • learn more about their research and what impact it may have on people and society
  • inspire new research thinking and encourage a new cohort of students to follow engineering careers

• By training engineers in theatrical skills, they will be better able to communicate their knowledge and expertise to wider, more diverse audiences.
• And, through connecting the disciplines of theatre and engineering we can instigate creative partnerships that develop new drama-led methods of disseminating research in the future.

As a result of these processes we hope that:

• The public will connect positively to engineering research by being engaged through story and in ways that spark their imagination and connect on a personal level
• Engineering research can begin to provide a vital source of exciting material for theatre-makers that want to be future-focused
• Links will be forged between the engineering and theatre communities that will create the potential for further research-inspired collaborations that take engineering research to new audiences

As you’d expect given the slight road bump of a global pandemic getting in our way, we’ve had to pivot all of the work we originally planned to do into online offerings, but there has been so much that we’ve learnt as a result. We’ve been communicating our passion for theatre to help engineers better communicate their passion for their research and I’ve had so much fun exploring these new ways to use my skills as a theatre maker and opening up the techniques and benefits of theatre making with our participant engineers. 

I can’t wait to share with you all of the work that we’ve undertaken since October 2020 to test out our hypothesis and to share our final product: 

• a collection of brand new theatrical works, created by engineers, inspired by their own specialist research

CreateWorks: Engineers inspired by theatre. Theatre inspired by engineers