This is the first book to explore how research and development (R & D) is used in contemporary British theatre-making, how it exists as a specific, often discrete methodology and how you can use it in your own theatre-making.

Featuring chapters by internationally recognised researchers, as well as interviews with innovative theatre-makers, it provides emerging theatre-makers with a handy guide to using R&D as part of their own practice, offering hints and tips from practitioners across the British theatre landscape.

Giving insights into their experience of A&D are artistic director Jenny Sealey, movement directors Joseph Alford and Vicki Ikbogwe, performer Selina Thompson, designers Tom Morris and Sophie Jump, composer Lilian Henley, and writers Alex Kelly, Sabrina Mahfouz and Inua Ellams.

Where R&D has been explored in other books, it has been framed as simply the early stages of rehearsal or as an element in a devised project. However, R&D is not limited to early on in a process or to devised projects: it is a recognised and holistic approach to work on scripted drama, both new and existing.

This book argues for and makes possible R&D as a discrete period of practical creativity that can also function as an end in itself without the need for a direct line between R&D and output or product, in line with this shift in direction from the Arts Council and major policy campaigns.

It is within this context and the prevalence of R&D as a key methodology in the work of the most exciting and innovative theatre companies in the UK that this important book sits, offering guidance on one of the most fertile and creatively engaging processes in contemporary theatre.