This essay sketches the possibilities for creative-relational inquiry through the lens of theatre and performance, particularly the writings of Peter Brook and Tim Etchells on “the empty space” and through affect theory and nonrepresentational writing, particularly the work of Kathleen Stewart, Ken Gale, and Jonathan Wyatt.

Can a theatre play provide actors and audiences with a feeling of being at home? This article is an autoethnographic work that addresses how the author finds, in his work directing the research-based theatre play Heavier than Air devised by Anne Harris and Stacy Holman Jones, a self-identification with its queer characters. Describing it as a play that explicitly and implicitly welcomes people to be queer and to tell their stories, the author analyzes how the play also symbolizes the free movement of people and the quest for home.