Performance Ethnography Research Articles

Can Research Become Ceremony?: Performance Ethnography and Indigenous Epistemologies

Drawing from the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Manulani Aluli Meyer, Shawn Wilson, and Floyd Favel, VIRGINIE MAGNAT asks how performance ethnography informed by Indigenous epistemologies might become a relational research practice vital to the survival of all living species and of the natural world we co-inhabit.

The Élan Vital and Sacred Research: Questioning the Spiritual Imperative in Performance Studies

In this essay I examine calls within the discipline of performance studies to understand the work of performance as spiritual or sacred. Using the concept of the élan vital, I explain how such calls are often lacking in explanatory power, negate the body, and are problematically conflated with virtue/moral behavior. I provide a sustained analysis of Norman Denzin's Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture to demonstrate this often problematic conflation. I then suggest how performance studies work that is informed by sacred and spiritual spaces as sites of study has more potential for reflexivity.

Performance as art-based research in drama therapy supervision

In this article, the authors discuss the use of art-based research, specifically performance ethnographic and autoethnographic processes, within clinical supervision of drama therapists. Performance ethnography will be discussed as it is utilized for case conceptualization, treatment planning and supervision of clinical treatment. Core, overlapping concepts from performance ethnography and drama therapeutic theory, such as verbatim dialogue and metaphor, validation and mutuality, embodiment and faithful rendering, will be discussed and demonstrated through case examples. The article concludes with a vision of the art-based researcher/supervisor as not only a participant-observer, but also a performer, one who is perpetually challenged by playing multiple roles.

Pantomime and politics: the story of a performance ethnography

The article looks at the alternative forms of knowledge that can be generated by a participatory, arts-based social research process. It draws on a project carried out with working-class women in the North West of England, UK, during the course of which a performance ethnography was developed depicting women’s experiences of motherhood and their interactions with a local Sure Start programme. The transcript of the play produced during the research process, The Wizard of Us, is interspersed here with discussion of how the research was carried out and the motives underlying the methodological approach taken. It looks at the extent to which a process involving stories, theatrics and ‘artifice’ can make claims of validity and authenticity and concludes by questioning the potential of the work to transform lives.

Standing Center

In this article, I demonstrate an approach to fusing autoethnographic writing and solo dance performance, advocating for a place for the female performer to stand as creative practitioner and researcher. While contemporary ethnographers and autoethnographers have actively engaged with issues of methodology and representational forms, and have gained some recognition within qualitative research communities, artists engaged in contemporary performance research still struggle for acknowledgement of the methodological rigor and representational innovation in their work. As in other art forms, dance artists have distinct bodies of knowledge, unique methods specific to dance, and diverse embodied and representational options for sharing knowledge. Referring to creative processes utilized in developing a particular solo dance performance, I weave together descriptions of movement activities undertaken to enhance awareness, literature on human developmental movement and on performance ethnography and excerpts of creative writing. To represent my dancing in this article, I include images from the solo performance. In this weaving I offer a partial representation of embodied ways of knowing and make a call to qualitative researchers to reconnect with their own beginnings – to return home.

Thrice-Told Tales: "Pouring Tea" as Performance Ethnography

Storytelling, Self, Society, 8:48-51, 2012 Copyright©Taylor &Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1550-5340 print /1932-0280 online DOI: 10.1080/15505340.2012.635099 Routledge Taylor &Francis Group PERFORMANCE REVIEW Thrice-Told Tales: Pouring Tea as Performance Ethnography CherylBlack Pouring Tea:BlackGayMenoftheSouthTellTheir Tales.Performed byDr.E. Patrick Johnson. Rhynsburger Theatre, University ofMissouri, Columbia, Missouri. April25,2011. From2004-2006,artist/scholar E. Patrick Johnson traveled throughout 15 Southern states conducting ethnographic, oralhistory interviews with morethan 70 gayblackmen.Thelifestories they shared with himeventually comprised 3,000pagesoftranscription, distilled andpublished in2008 as SweetTea: BlackGayMenoftheSouthTellTheirTales.Johnson's original intention ,however, had beento perform thestoriesin front of live audiences.As he prepared a narrative text forpublication, he also crafted a performance basedonselected narratives which he has toured, in variousforms, tomorethan30 universities since2006. On April25, 2011, Dr.Johnson brought anhour-long version oftheperformance text totheUniversity ofMissouri, sponsored by severalcampusorganizations including theGraduate Theatre Organization; the LGBTQ ResourceCenter;theChancellor'sDiversity Initiative; theDepartments ofTheatre, Sociology, andWomen'sandGender Studies; andtheGraduate Professional Council. Bertolt Brechtonce observedthat"thereare manyconceivablewaysof tellinga story" (201). Johnson's method ofstorytelling exemplifies theartistic, critical practice ofperformance ethnography. Pioneered inthe1980sbyDwight Conquergood, theperformance ofethnographic research hassteadily gainedground, primarily within academicsettings, as a rhetorically compellingwayof "deeplysensing theother" (3). Performance ethnography is storytelling, which incorporates manyoftheaesthetic pleasures oftraditional, theatrical performance butwiththe distinctively political andethical aimofsubverting notions ofexpertise, interpretation, andunilateral authority inprivileged narratives. Aware ofthemoral andpolitical implications ofperformance , Conquergood developed a dialogic practice that resisted a collapsing ofidentities, instead keeping thedialogue openandalivebetween ethnographer and"Other." Following Conquergood, Address correspondence toCheryl Black, Department of Theater, University of Maryland, 129 Fine Arts, Columbia, MO65211. E-mail: BlackC@missouri.edu PERFORMANCE REVIEW 49 Johnson has crafted a dialogicperformance thatportrays a genuineconversation, dispersing authority ofthetext andrespecting thedignity, willandindividuality oftheinterviewees. Johnson signalsa breakfrom thepublished narrative withhistitle change, from thebook's SweetTeatothemoreperformative Pouring Tea, a phrase with thespecialmeaning within the black,gaycommunity ofgossiping, telling secrets, ortelling tales.Tellingly, theprogram cover features theperformance title inlargeboldfont anda photograph ofoneofthe"blackgaymen" ofthetitle. Johnson's credit at thebottom oftheprogram is in a muchsmaller, lighter font. Inside, Johnson's bio sharesroughly equalspacewith theidentification ofthesevenmenwho will"pourteaabout"central themes: earlychildhood, coming out,rebellion, religion, coming ofage pre-Civil Rights (in the1920sand 1930s),masculinity andpeerpressure, andbeinga Southern diva. Inkeeping with a critical andnonillusionist performance practice that doesnotaimtoconvince anaudience that they areseeing"reality," thespace(theapron oftheRhynsburger's proscenium stage, with thedropped proscenium curtain providing a background), wasfurnished sparsely with twostools(oneholding a glassoficedtea),a musicstand holding thescript, anda coatrackon which hung a choir robe.Thestand androbepoint toJohnson's useofmusicas a bridge between stories - a richly evocative mixofgospel,blues,disco,classic,andjazz- that notonlyprovides considerable aesthetic pleasure butalsounderscores thethemes inthestories. In further keeping with dialogicperformance practice, Johnson doesnotattempt todisguise hisidentity. He is simply dressed inblackslacksandoxford shirt, andhisperformance style is simple, intimate, andaccessible.He settles comfortably on oneofthestoolsandoccasionally takesa sipoficedtea.Thescript onthemusicstand reminds theaudienceofthesourcematerial ,andas Johnson beginstore-tell thetalesherefers tothescript regularly, perhaps reading, orperhaps consciously callingattention totheexistence ofthestories inallthree forms: as originallytold ,live,tohim;as transcribed andeditedtext;andnow,as re-told inanother context toanother audience. Johnson precedes there-telling ofeachstory byplaying a brief recording from theoriginal interview, another reminder totheaudience that these stories werenotauthored byJohnson. WhenJohnson continues thestory, hedistinguishes thesevennarrators with subtle adjustments ofvoice,body, gesture, orfacialexpression, interpolating questions as himself (the ethnographer) andresponding as anOther. He doesnotattempt themimetic transformation that typifies, forexample, AnnaDeavereSmith'sperformances ofmultiple anddiverse characters. Whereas Smith's virtuosity as a quick-change artist cansometimes overshadow themessage, in Johnson's dialogicperformance theinterviewer, thestories, and,most importantly, themenwho first toldthem consistently share thestage. Without ever"disappearing" into theroles, Johnson nonetheless manages tovividly evokethe presence ofsevenindividuals. Theenactment oftheir stories ofgrowing upblackandgayinthe South, as "co-performatively interpreted" (Johnson's phrase) byanopenly blackgaymanborn in theSouth, constitutes a profound critique ofracism, sexism, andhomophobia inourculture. Their stories arepainful, poignant, funny, andtriumphant. Storytellers recallphysical andsexualabuse, poverty, thefearofbeingunwanted; fearofdamnation andhell,thoughts ofsuicide.Humor, however, pervades eventhemost painful ofmemories. Bursts oflaughter accompanied Michael's memories ofreactions tohissexuality from hishomophobic family, particularly hisrecollection ofhisfather's attempt tocuthisnewly permed bangswith a pairofhedgeclippers. Theaudience responded similarly when thesoft-spoken Freddie recalls"carrying a single edgerazor blade. . . 50 BLACK tosharpen pencils," andcutting a bullyinorder togaina measure ofrespect as a "meanlittle sissy." Gainingthatmeasureof respect, no matter how hard-won, is a recurring themewithin thestories. Humorandhard-won respect arepresent evenwithin...

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Bringing Experiences of Race, Class, Language, Gender, and Culture to Research in Mathematics Education

Through this performance ethnography the authors present the stories of emerging scholars who in their research identify an interest in equity issues in the field of mathematics education. The article is based on life-story interviews with 26 participants. Six composite characters were developed to represent the voices of the participants. Particular attention is devoted to issues of race and how other experiences can provide windows into the racialized experiences that exist in learning and teaching mathematics.

Antipodean Performativity

In this article introducing the special issue, I argue for ethnographic research and research traditions that are simultaneously global and local, that are universal and singular, that are a mish-mash of cultural and individual negotiations. Further, in this piece, I locate a Performative Ethnography that is both vital and thriving, and offer as exemplars the authors’ works.

‘I don't find any privacy around here’: ethnographic encounters with local practices of literacy in the state prison of Oaxaca

In his poem entitled ‘Privacy’, Alberto, an inmate in the state prison of Oaxaca, Mexico, vividly evokes the conflictive dynamics of space and time within his living quarters. This is his way of dealing with the sadness, trauma, and mundanity of his incarceration. Alberto's poem has emerged from our ongoing ethnographic project based on a creative writing workshop that we have been carrying out at the Ixcotel state prison in Oaxaca. Our objective is to analyze the inmate-students’ texts, as well as to reflect on the overall experience of the workshop, in order to interrogate the manner in which the inmate-students affectively deal with their imprisonment. Our discovery is that the workshop enables the inmate-students to maneuver within local practices of literacy as well as imagined communities in order to cross postcolonial borderlines and challenge the geopolitics of language knowledge. In doing so, the creative writing workshop serves a ‘liberating’ function, allowing the inmate-students to ‘write’ their way through ‘colonial difference’ and thereby locate themselves momentarily beyond the walls of their confinement. This discovery emerges from a co-constructed and performative ethnography based on an interpretative framework leading to borderland epistemology.

Performance: A Strategy for Professional Development in Early Childhood Teacher Preparation

The purpose of this article is to propose performance as a creative instructional strategy to convey complex competencies related to understanding and working effectively with families in early childhood education. Performance derives from performance ethnography, which is a qualitative research methodology. Its application to professional development enables students and in-service participants not only to hear the voices of families, but to experience them through performance. This article describes the advantages and disadvantages of performance as an approach to professional development and illustrates the development and application of an example performance. Authors discuss how faculty, researchers, and those responsible for professional development can use performance to bridge the gap between research and practice and to move early childhood educators towards greater family-centered competencies when serving diverse families and children.

Toward a performance of possibilities: resisting gendered (in)justice

In the twenty-first century the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country. While the numbers of incarcerated males far outnumber incarcerated women, there are still great concerns about the growing female prison population. This fixation with incarceration and building prisons has trickled down to America’s children as well. Among those who have been strategically extracted from childhood and adolescence and catapulted into the category of “adults” are teen girls and more specifically girls of color. This postcard from the resistance seeks to examine the ways in which playwriting and performance serve as mediating tools for formerly incarcerated black girls seeking reentry to their schools, communities, and families. More specifically this postcard extends the notion of performance ethnography and formerly incarcerated girls’ “performance of possibilities” that serve as a bridge between incarcerated and liberated lives.

Corsets, Headpieces, and Tape: An Ethnography of Gendered Performance

Drag queens co-construct their identities in order to become part of one segment of the gay community referred to as the drag queen community. We argue that to act in the identity of a drag queen is to maximize the contrast with ascribed gender identity and minimize the distortion thereof. We adapted Tajifel and Turner’s (1979) Social Identity Theory to provide us with the necessary framework, but we built upon Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor and Carbaugh’s ideas on social identification. We conducted several interviews with the different performers before and after the drag shows over several weeks. As part of our findings, in order for the drag queens to communicatively create their group identity, there is a certain degree of behavior and attitude conformity. There is an importance placed upon the likeness or dependence/reliance on one another (i.e. a sense of community), and last, there is internalization of these behaviors, exerted both individually and collectively. This helps to solidify their sense of community and belonging through ritualistic behaviors and allows the individuals to gain a better understanding of who they are personally and socially through this membership. Key words : Social Identification; Gender Identity; Drag Queen Culture Resume: Les drag queens co-construisent leurs identites pour devenir partie d'un segment de la communaute homosexuelle appelee la communaute des drag queens. Nous affirmons qu'agir dans l'identite de drag queen est de maximiser le contraste avec l'identite de genre attribue et minimiser la distorsion de celle-ci. Nous avons adapte la theorie de l'identite sociale de Tajifel et Turner (1979) afin de nous fournir un cadre necessaire, mais nous avons construit la metaphore dramaturgique de Goffman et les idees sur l'identification sociale de Carbaugh. Nous avons mene plusieurs entretiens avec de differents artistes avant et apres les spectacles sur plusieurs semaines. En tant qu'une partie de nos resultats, nous avons trouve que pour que les drag queens puissent creer leur identite de groupe, il y a un certain degre de comportement et d'attitude de conformite. Il y a une importance accordee a la ressemblance ou la dependance/confiance entre les uns les autres (c'est a dire un sentiment de communaute), et enfin, il y a une internalisation de ces comportements, exerces a la fois individuellement et collectivement. Cela contribue a solidifier leur sentiment de communaute et d'appartenance a travers des comportements rituels et permet aux individus de mieux comprendre qui sont-ils personnellement et socialement par le biais de cette adhesion. Mots-cles: Identification Sociale; Identite de Genre; Culture de Drag Queen

‘Just give us the bones!’: theatres of African diasporic returns

Repatriations of dead African bodies, ritualistic reburials, and commemorative practices of remembering bodies elaborate African practices of cultural memory and collective identification. The repatriations of the bodily remains of Sarah Baartman, the so-called ‘Hottentot Venus’, from France to South Africa, and ‘El Negro’ from Spain to Botswana, are emblematic and define instances of such African dramas. This article interrogates these embodied rituals and examines their relevance to the diaspora experience. It seeks to theorise an African-centered conceptualisation of the notion of diaspora, by using the term ‘diasporic returns’ to explore the non-slave exchange of black bodies. It also examines contemporary theatrical moments of trafficking African cultural practices using the critical tools of performance theory, anthropology and ethnography.

Dancing the ‘Data’

This article traces a process of combining dance and narrative text into performance ethnography. It focuses on how interviews collected during an ongoing research project on serious contemporary dancers' experiences with injuries can ‘be danced’ in a research presentation. The author reflects how the empirical material from the interviews informed a narrative text that, combined with contemporary dance choreography interpreted through Deleuzian rhizomatic analysis, was included into live performance ethnography. The author concludes with a need for an on-going experimentation with the dancing body, theory, and writing in qualitative research.

Bollyculture: Ethnography of identity, media and performance

This article offers the concept of ‘Bollyculture’ as a paradigmatic frame for understanding the media/dance cultures and life-space of young South-Asian Americans. Drawing on an extended ethnographic study of India Nite1 (a performance of Bollywood inspired dances), the essay argues that concepts like Bollyculture capture the hybrid and contested nature of diasporic subcultures, while offering concrete ways of observing the longitudinal and discursive impact of Bollywood on issues of identity, gender and culture.

Performance-Based Data Analysis: a Dynamic Dialogue Between Ethnography and Performance-Making Processes

This article focuses on the processes of constructing an ethnographic performance. As a participant researcher, I investigated the working processes of a research group that I was part of as we constructed a performance ethnography in which we developed a dialogic and embodied method of analysing and exploring ethnographic data. The study demonstrated how a performance-based approach to data analysis, using devices such as improvisations, symbolic action and dramatic elements, enhanced the understanding, interpretation and representation of ethnographic data. This is discussed and illustrated in this article.

Paulina Montaño demanda su libertad. Aproximación a una etnografía performativa de un pleito judicial, Chocó, 1738

Con base en el pleito que la esclava Paulina Montaño entabló en contra de su amo Juan Caysedo, en el Chocó, entre 1738 y 1739, examino las posibilidades de intervención de los esclavos en la producción de los documentos, sus posibilidades para proseguir un juicio asimétrico en contra de sus propietarios y las acciones seguidas para obtener la libertad. Para estudiar el caso me apoyo en la “etnografía performativa”, la cual me brinda herramientas para una lectura distinta del proceso judicial.

Beyond “an Aesthetic of Objectivity”: Performance Ethnography, Performance Texts, and Theatricality

This article is about the ways in which a dominant “aesthetic of objectivity” (Denzin, 2003, p. 73) pervades much contemporary performance ethnography and scholarly performance text, subverting many scholars’ stated desires to use aesthetic forms to critique hegemonic discourses and democratize scholarship. First, I will define the dominant “aesthetic of objectivity” as it applies to performance ethnography and performance texts and trace its origins to mainstream documentary theatre performances. I will then examine how these conventions play out in an example of an explicitly scholarly performance project, and argue the significance of liveness in the scholarly performance act. Finally, I will offer a few examples of arts-based research performance projects operating in alternate aesthetic paradigms rupturing the “aesthetic of objectivity” and offer recommendations and further questions for arts-based researchers and scholars interested in experimenting with performance forms.

Dancing the Black Atlantic: Katherine Dunham’s Research-to-Performance Method

Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) was one of the great dancer/choreographers of the 20th century. As a trained anthropologist and author, her unique contributions formed a marriage between dance and ethnology that developed the archetype of the scholar-artist. I explore her research-to-performance methodology that trail-blazed what has been analyzed by Caribbeanist VèVè Clark as "performance ethnography." Dunham explored Afro-Caribbean culture and dance, as well as her own African American culture. The essay demonstrates how she did this specially in her writings on the Jamaican Moroons and the Vodou of Haiti, recontextualizing the latter in her famous 1945 "Shango" dance work. In the process, Dunham danced the Black Atlantic well before that trope was even conceptualized, and dignified black dance forms of the Americas.

Performance ethnography as an approach to health‐related education

This article explores the educational potential of an arts‐informed performance ethnography entitled Across the Tamar, which comprises a series of stories, songs and poems. As a classroom action research project – a ‘teaching experiment’ – we gave three performances to undergraduate and postgraduate sport and health science, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy students at two universities in the United Kingdom. Drawing on data that comprise the written responses of 126 students, we explore the learning processes evident in the students' accounts. Student responses suggest that through privileging personal, embodied and emotive stories, the performance stimulated alternative insights into older women's lives and provoked them to reflect on this new knowledge in the context of their own lives. By considering student responses in relation to narrative theory, we explore how performance ethnography can contribute to learning, critical reflection and transformation among students more familiar with scientific approaches to research and teaching.