What started as an idea of two subject disciplines collaborating to support students practicing their English outside the classroom, a theatrical production of Henry V by Shakespeare, became a case study from which to draw pedagogical principles on teaching and learning within a Higher Education Sino-British Transnational Educational (TNE) Partnership. Research into TNE activities focuses mainly on issues such as strategy, quality assurance and competitive advantage, and there is less on the lived experiences of students and lecturers, pedagogical clashes that occur within TNE partnerships and on the methodological discussions that should take place in interdisciplinary research. Through our story of facilitating a production of Henry V, we interrogate pedagogical issues we found in teaching, methodological challenges in interdisciplinary research and ultimately put forward a ‘response-able pedagogy’ that enables different voices to be heard and different knowledges to be recognised in coexistence.