Perpetual Invention and Performance-Based Research: The Case of The Ballad of Robin Hood and the Potter

When I was in graduate school, I had a secret, albeit not a very well-kept one. Before I moved across the country to study the Middle Ages, I was an actor and director, working consistently in California’s regional theaters. I had always been torn between my creative instincts and my intellectual pursuits, and, when I entered my MA program, I thought that intellect had prevailed and I had left theater behind for good. I remember that, when my peers in the English department would lament the state of the academic job market, I would shrug and think, “I was an