Question: What do you use science for in a music theatre

Alison Whitaker answered on 16 Jun 2015:

I currently look at data on people who come and experience music, theatre and dance. This data is collected online ticket sales and web browsing. I look at their behaviours and work out why they might be coming to watch something. This helps the people producing the work to understand how people respond to their work, which is really important for artists and to get funding to keep their work going.
BUT I think there is an even better way science can help (which is how I started in this area). This is to help the artists, musicians, dancers, actors etc. to be better at what they do. Musicians can get lots of injuries – most of them are known as overuse injuries which is when they repeat something over and over again until they are injured. This can happen in sport or in jobs that have lots of manual labour (or if you play too many computer games!). The interesting and difficult thing about musicians and dancers is that they won’t listen if you tell them to stop doing something to get better – they won’t rest. So you need to think of ways that allows the body to heal while they can continue doing the thing that is making them injured. That’s what I studied and I find it really interesting!