The Chronic Pain Body

Description

As part of the Bodies and Performance Working Group I presented a performance lecture.

Abstract
This playful and evocative performance lecture explores how chronic pain can be a collaborator in performance practice. By focusing on my practice-led research into working creatively with my chronic pain, I discuss what it means to devise and perform with an unpredictable and changing body. What kinds of practice emerge when embracing a troubled and shifting body?

I am a queer-disabled artist-researcher working across theatre, choreography, and live art. I have lived with chronic back and neurological pain for over 20 years. Until recently, I related to my pain solely as a barrier to my life and work. Seven years ago, I began to turn towards my pain differently, asking how can I work with, rather than despite/against, my pain? I have explored what kinds of aesthetics and practices emerge when the chronic pain body is embraced as valid and knowledgeable. I have developed performance/choreographic tasks that enable the expression, qualities and skills of chronic pain bodies (Hopfinger 2021, 123). Using and developing this approach, I created my solo performance 'Pain and I' (an award-winning internationally touring piece).

Pain and I explores the rich complexities of living with pain, involving choreography that explores the limits and possibilities of my body and intimate autobiographical text framed as a love letter to my pain. The piece charts the loss and grief of chronic pain, as well as its lessons and insights. By embracing my changing body, and accommodating diverse audiences, multiple versions of Pain and I were developed – live performance, digital audio piece, graphic score (digital/physical), and an installation (www.sarahhopfinger.org.uk/pain-and-i).

Drawing from this project, crip art-activist thought (Kafer 2013; Clare 2017; Kafai 2021) and pain philosophy (Leder 2016; Birk 2013), I argue that chronic pain performance can be a unique exploration of the changing body and a practice of knowledge-making.

Period	2 Sept 2026
Event title	Theatre and Performance Research Association TaPRA 2026
Event type	Conference
Location	London, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National