This article discusses a long-term theatre project that I run with mental health care users and staff in a forensic psychiatric hospital in South Africa. I argue that the values underpinning the project align with those of Mad Studies, a field that is located as an emerging academic discipline within disability studies. The article seeks to problematise the conceptual frameworks available to a researcher working within theatre and disability in the global South. As a researcher, I may choose the framework of "madness" as part of a social justice research stance. However, in a South African context of little to no psychiatric survivor/consumer activism, this may not in any way be adopted, understood, or claimed by any of the people who suffer "madness" and with whom I create theatre. This article seeks to provoke questions around applied theatre disability research and the potential for research practices to de/re colonise.