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Chase the Feeling is a contemporary play and performance script that uses theatre to interrogate theatre — and autism — at the same time.
Fast-paced, satirical, and unapologetically theatrical, the work draws on classic dramatic forms and genre conventions to deliver something that is by turns absurd, poignant, and deeply emotional. It’s sharp, funny, confronting… and yes, it includes an inspirational sports montage.
At its centre is Tahlia, an autistic actor navigating a world of people, systems, and institutions that insist on defining her experience for her. She isn’t broken — the systems around her are. Abandoned by those meant to support her, Tahlia decides the only way to be understood is to step onto the stage herself.
With the help of two characters drawn from her subconscious, Tahlia — and the audience — are pulled into the strange, existential universe of theatre: a place of representation, projection, power, and longing. What unfolds is both a critique and a love letter to performance, asking who theatre is really for, and who gets to speak.
Developed as part of Mik Allen’s Master’s research, Chase the Feeling operates as ethnodrama — treating lived experience and emotion as legitimate cultural knowledge, and using live performance to surface insights that conventional analysis often misses.
“Multi-layered, genre-busting theatre.” — Stage Whispers, 2016
AVAILABLE NOW FROM…
Chase the Feeling is a contemporary play developed through practice-led research and situated within the field of ethnodrama, using live performance as both creative output and analytical method. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, reflective practice, and lived experience, the work translates qualitative research into dramaturgical form, positioning embodiment and emotion as legitimate modes of cultural inquiry. Centred on an autistic actor navigating institutional and social systems that frame difference as deficit, the play employs satire, genre play, and reflexive theatrical devices to interrogate representation, power, and belonging. As research-in-practice, Chase the Feeling demonstrates how performance can generate and communicate anthropological insight in ways that conventional qualitative analysis may not, contributing to interdisciplinary conversations across performance studies, disability studies, and cultural anthropology.
Allen, Michael James, ‘Chase the Feeling: Making Meaning in an Autistic Theatre Company’ (Thesis (M.Phil.)--University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2016., 2015)
https://searchlibrary.adelaide.edu.au/permalink/61AU_INST/mfhv9t/alma99207308909071
Chase the Feeling is a contemporary play and performance script that uses theatre to interrogate theatre — and autism — at the same time.
Fast-paced, satirical, and unapologetically theatrical, the work draws on classic dramatic forms and genre conventions to deliver something that is by turns absurd, poignant, and deeply emotional. It’s sharp, funny, confronting… and yes, it includes an inspirational sports montage.
At its centre is Tahlia, an autistic actor navigating a world of people, systems, and institutions that insist on defining her experience for her. She isn’t broken — the systems around her are. Abandoned by those meant to support her, Tahlia decides the only way to be understood is to step onto the stage herself.
With the help of two characters drawn from her subconscious, Tahlia — and the audience — are pulled into the strange, existential universe of theatre: a place of representation, projection, power, and longing. What unfolds is both a critique and a love letter to performance, asking who theatre is really for, and who gets to speak.
Developed as part of Mik Allen’s Master’s research, Chase the Feeling operates as ethnodrama — treating lived experience and emotion as legitimate cultural knowledge, and using live performance to surface insights that conventional analysis often misses.
“Multi-layered, genre-busting theatre.” — Stage Whispers, 2016
AVAILABLE NOW FROM…
Chase the Feeling is a contemporary play developed through practice-led research and situated within the field of ethnodrama, using live performance as both creative output and analytical method. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, reflective practice, and lived experience, the work translates qualitative research into dramaturgical form, positioning embodiment and emotion as legitimate modes of cultural inquiry. Centred on an autistic actor navigating institutional and social systems that frame difference as deficit, the play employs satire, genre play, and reflexive theatrical devices to interrogate representation, power, and belonging. As research-in-practice, Chase the Feeling demonstrates how performance can generate and communicate anthropological insight in ways that conventional qualitative analysis may not, contributing to interdisciplinary conversations across performance studies, disability studies, and cultural anthropology.
Allen, Michael James, ‘Chase the Feeling: Making Meaning in an Autistic Theatre Company’ (Thesis (M.Phil.)--University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2016., 2015)
https://searchlibrary.adelaide.edu.au/permalink/61AU_INST/mfhv9t/alma99207308909071