Out/performing in the academy : writing 'The Breast Project'

This paper tells the multi-layered story of how the author came to write a theatre script about breasts as part of her research. She frames this writing as 'border-work' as she plays at the edges of academic and fictional writing. In this paper ideas from Barthes and Cixous are interleaved with extracts from the author's own texts and with her story of writing for theatre in order to explore how poststructural theory can open up new spaces and places from which (and into which) to write. She describes the collaborative contexts of collective biography research, of writing, of dramaturgy, and of performance within which 'the Breast Project' was written and speculates on the extent to which the theatre script was shaped within and by these contexts.