I, You, We Are the Oracle: Creative Self-expression as Vocal Liberation

Women change and alter our voices—both physically and metaphorically—depending on the environment, our interactions, and for personal safety, but what is our voice when we are by ourselves? Finding ways to elicit the inner voice has the potential to inspire and enable others to claim their voices and, thereby, enhance creative self-expression. 'I Am, You Are, We Are the Oracle' is a post-structural feminist investigation into the nuanced construction of women's voices in contemporary Western society. This research investigates the construction of metaphorical voice as a socially crafted exchange. The central premise of this research is to create methods to assist women in claiming and honing their voices when engaging in creative practice, by exploring if and how oracle cards may be used as provocations for creative self-expression, specifically theatrical playwriting. The research produced three main outputs: thesis dissertation, oracle deck sample, and a 40-minute playscript. The creative artefacts used practice-led research, using oracle cards as provocations for creative self-expression, to create a theatrical playscript. I employed the research lens of post-structural feminism and intersectionality, coupled with autoethnographic feminine reflective writing (écriture féminine), to investigate the construction of voice through performance and writing. In a society rich with stimuli and laden with literal and digital noise, finding one's voice—that is, one’s sociopolitical position, what one stands for, and one’s capacity to voice personal truths agentically—amongst the noise proves increasingly challenging. Can creative self-expression lead to self-liberation by cutting through the noise in dialogue with oneself?