Burlesque as a Way of Processing Trauma
A multidisciplinary exploration of embodiment, persona, and emotional resilience
Research Outline
Introduction
Burlesque has traditionally been studied within feminist and aesthetic frameworks as a performative art of empowerment, parody, and spectacle.
This research seeks to extend those narratives by exploring the psychological dimensions of Burlesque: how performance, persona, and embodiment can become tools for emotional processing and trauma-related experience.
Unlike other performative arts, Burlesque involves both literal and metaphorical undressing: a dual exposure through which the performer reveals, confronts, and reclaims aspects of the self.
Research Focus
This project investigates how engaging in Burlesque performance can serve as a method for processing and expressing difficult emotional experience, providing participants with a structured yet creative framework to explore complex feelings through movement, character, and self-reinvention. The study acknowledges that trauma is not always tied to a single external event; it may also be shaped by internalised emotional patterns such as anxiety or depression. In this context, Burlesque becomes a performative tool for confronting both externally imposed and internally sustained wounds.
Drawing from acting methodologies (Stanislavski, psychodrama, embodiment) and lived performer experience, the study explores how the interplay between character creation and emotional authenticity can foster resilience and personal transformation.
Research Participants and Methodology
The core research group consists of performers from The Ministry of Tease, individuals trained through a structured method combining acting, psychodramatic techniques and embodiment. Their shared background provides a coherent foundation for exploring how performance can become a medium of emotional processing and self-reclamation.
Participants include performers of diverse genders, sexual orientations, nationalities, as well as educational and cultural backgrounds, many of whom have experienced social marginalisation or trauma—ranging from bullying, sexual harm, and gender-based discrimination to internal struggles related to anxiety, depression, or self-perception. This pluralism is essential to understanding how identity, culture, and lived experience shape one’s relationship to the body, performance, and emotional resilience. These experiences are not approached as pathology but as material for artistic and psychological transformation. The focus remains on resilience, identity reconstruction, and the possibility of reclaiming agency through creative performance.
To broaden the study’s scope, additional participants may include independent Burlesque and Cabaret artists, performing arts students, and individuals engaged in embodiment or expressive movement practices. Through semi-structured interviews, reflective journaling, and embodied performance sessions, the study examines how creative practice intersects with resilience, self-perception, and agency.
Theoretical Framework
This research draws upon multiple intersecting disciplines.
Feminist performance theory (Butler, Dolan, Phelan) informs the project’s approach to identity, visibility, and agency within gendered embodiment.
Affect theory and trauma studies (Sedgwick, Ahmed, Ryang, van der Kolk, Caruth) provide the conceptual basis for understanding shame, vulnerability, and the body as a site where emotional and cultural experience becomes physically inscribed.
Insights from embodied and psychodynamic theory (Orbach, Damasio, Freud, Winnicott, Kristeva) deepen the exploration of trauma as both a relational rupture and an internalised narrative shaped by attachment, memory, and societal expectation.
Acting and psychodramatic methodologies (Stanislavski, Grotowski, Moreno) offer practical tools for accessing emotional truth, constructing persona, and transforming lived experience into performative expression.
Finally, contemporary Burlesque scholarship (Zemeckis, Sally, Walsh) situates the practice within broader conversations on parody, gender politics, marginalisation, and the re-authoring of self through performance. These references are indicative rather than exhaustive.
Expected Contribution
This research positions Burlesque not merely as entertainment but as an applied performative practice with potential psychological and sociocultural value. By bridging artistry, psychology, and pedagogy, it seeks to expand academic understanding of how embodied performance can facilitate trauma processing, resilience, and empowerment, particularly within diverse and marginalised communities. Ultimately, it aims to establish Burlesque as a legitimate framework for embodied research and trauma-informed creative practice, contributing new insight to performance studies, gender theory, and trauma-informed pedagogies.
About the Researcher
Dr Josephine Ivanova – Yannacopoulou (aka Luna Sin) is a choreographer, researcher, and founder of The Ministry of Tease. Holding a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and extensive experience as Lecturer and Module Leader at Edinburgh Napier University, she integrates artistic practice with academic methodology, developing a unique pedagogical model based on acting, psychodrama, and embodiment. Her earlier research and teaching in musicology and arts education—including work with incarcerated and marginalised youth—inform her current interest in performance as a mode of resilience and agency. Her work has been presented in theatres and festivals internationally, combining aesthetics, satire, and performative storytelling.
Access to Full Proposal
A detailed version of the research proposal, including methodology outline, bibliography, and ethics framework, is available upon request. Access is granted via passkey for academic collaborators, potential supervisors, and institutional reviewers.
📧 For inquiries or access, please contact:
josephine_research@yahoo.com