The playʹs the thing: Theater professionals make sense of Shakespeare Original Research Article

This study examines how theater professionals (actors, directors and others) make sense of the works of a culturally iconic author (William Shakespeare). The research aims to address critique of the information studies/science fieldʹs excessive focus on active information seeking and searching by developing an alternative approach, and to understand sense-making as more than the problem-solving behavior of individuals: to see it as an embodied, social process, involving emotion as well as rationality. In doing so it draws on theoretical approaches from a range of different disciplines and traditions, including Dervinʹs sense-making, Foucaultʹs discourse analysis and Derridaʹs deconstructionism.