This account discusses "reflective dialogues", a process utilising video to re-examine in-action decision-making with theatre practitioners who operate in community contexts. The reflexive discussions combine with observation, text and digital documentation to offer a sometimes "messy" (from Schön 1987) dynamic to the research and provide multiple insights through reviewing the working processes. This account presents the method, along with examples from reflective dialogues with a selection of practitioners and critique of the processes. The account toys with this interplay of practice/research/reflection and attempts (albeit temporarily) to impose a structure to configure the mess. In seeking to re-inform the practitioners and potential practitioners in applied theatre, the reflective dialogues have generated their own web of messed up research-of-reflection-on-practice.