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17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
Contributors: Johnny Saldaa Book Title: Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues Chapter Title: "17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre" Pub. Date: 2008 Access Date: October 30, 2013 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412905312 Online ISBN: 9781452226545 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452226545.n17 Print pages: 195-209 This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
The umbrella term commonly applied to presentations of this genre is arts-based research. The phrase suggests that art receives priority or is used as the springboard for research. But I propose that ethnodrama and ethnotheatre are research-based art since the forms are in service to the content.
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
is thus a simple transition to act on our performative impulses by developing artistically rendered work that reflects our dramatic nature. Ethnotheatre is also a presentational form of research in harmony with our contemporary visual and performative cultures. In these societies, project work is exhibited, displayed, showcasedthe medium shows us as well as tells us about phenomena in nonverbal symbols that supplement oral and written language. The late Miles and Huberman (1994) encouraged researchers to think displaymeaning that the complexity of qualitative data analysis and a study's findings could be essentialized through readable charts, matrices, and graphics. An ethnodrama is a written, artistically composed arrangement of qualitative data using such dramatic literary conventions as monologue, dialogue, and stage directions. Ethnotheatre is the synchronous, [p. 197 ] three-dimensional, mounted performance display of the ethnodrama for spectators.
Monologue
Professional one-person shows offer audiences an evening with such personalities as Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, and Gertrude Stein. Most recently, the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award were given to Doug Wright (2004) for I Am My Own Wife, a one-man ethnodrama showcasing the life of German gay transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. Through an actor's extended monologue the audience witnesses the performance of a life story peppered with informative, amusing, and poignant anecdotes and vignettes. These plays are their playwrights' biographical case studies of historic figures, composed in the first person, to render a seemingly autobiographical solo performance through theatrical storytelling. The individual's narrative includes carefully selected life history details extracted from interviews (when possible), period materials such as newspapers, other historians' biographical works, or autobiographical materials such as journals and diaries. These are adapted and woven together through the playwright's conjecture of how the subject him- or herself might have spoken, with comparable attention paid to solid dramatic structure. Ethnodramatic monologue provides opportunities for the character-participant to reveal not just autobiographical factual details, but inner thoughts, feelings, attitudes, values, and beliefs through spoken narrative. From Saldaa, Finley, and Finley's (2005) Street Rat, an adaptation of fieldwork with homeless adolescents in New Orleans, one of the young men speaks to a female newcomer at their squat: Tigger: My dad kicked me out when I was just seventeen. When I graduated from high school, he said Congratulations. Then he gave me two weeks to get out. That was six years ago. When I first left home, I lived in Chicago, in the subway. I did what I had to do to survive. It's all about survival. You either survive or you die. People who live here, the professionals, the fucking little yuppie people, they don't even see this side of life. They don't see it, [p. 198 ] they're blind to it. That's why they ignore me when I ask them for change. But how am I going to stay fed, other than asking people for money? I hate it. I'm free, but things aren't free. I need things so I have to get money. I want a regular job. (stands) When I go job hunting I dress smart, wear button downs
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most of the time. If I had a tie, I'd wear it. But, I mean, just look. Who the fuck is going to want some nasty lookin', dirty lookin', someone who hasn't taken a shower in God knows how long, handling their food, or ringing them up on a cash register, or whatever? I've got over a hundred goddamn applications out in this city. I've got a voice mail number. Nobody ever calls. I make plans, but anytime I make plans they always fall through. (sits) So, I take things day by day, don't make plans too far in the future. Every minute of my life is another minute of my life. (pp. 171172) Figure 17.1 Jess Sari, as Tigger, Looks for Food in the New Orleans French Quarter in Saldaa, Finley, and Finley's Street Rat
[p. 199 ]
Dialogue
Dialogue emerges from field notes, focus group interviews, or fictive constructions (yet firmly grounded in the data) of plausible interactions among two or more participants. The back-and-forth nature of dramatic dialogue, however, is more than conversational sharing of differing perspectives. Dialogue consists of the character-participants' negotiations over an issue, an opposition of wills, or a tense, conflict-laden exchange.
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Again, from Street Rat, the playwrights drew from multiple data sources and genres of reporting (e.g., short story, poetry, reader's theatre script) to reconstruct the possible dialogue that might have occurred between the participant-characters. In the scene below, Roach, a 19-year-old runaway, has just been demeaned by a gay leather-man pitching pennies at his feet after asking for spare change. Roach's best friend joins him as they wait for more generous passers-by on the street: Figure 17.2 David Ojala (left) as Roach and Jess Sari as Tigger Dialogue in the French Quarter in Saldaa, Finley, and Finley's Street Rat
Roach: People try and trick with me for money all the time. I just say, Fuck off, I'm not a whore. People figure that if you're in the gay district, you are. I'm not going to sell my ass. Tigger: I know plenty of fucking straight up prostitutes. They're cool as hell, but that's not something I'm going to do. [p. 200 ] Roach: It makes you compromise yourself. People who do it have to be comfortable with doing it. Sometimes people get caught up in it, when they aren't comfortable doing it, but they do it anyway. That causes so many problems. Tigger: That, and the simple fact that people who hustlenot the people who hustle, but the people who hustle themit's like, the only
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reason why these rich fuckin' guys are doing this shit, lots of times, the simple fact is they know they can grab a guy off the street and just say, Come home and fuck me!, Come home, do this with me, and just take control. I don't know; it's just fucked up. Roach: And then they act all disgusted when you tell them, No. Like you're nothing if you don't do something like that to earn money. Tigger: Like you don't have any choice in the matter. (A WAITRESS on her way to work passes by) Roach: Spare change? Tigger: Spare change? Waitress: (smiles at them, pulls a coin from her apron pocket, and puts it in ROACH's outstretched hand) There you go. (exits) Roach: Thanks. Tigger: Thanks. (ROACH and TIGGER leer at the WAITRESS as she leaves) Roach: Now, if a woman wanted to pay me to have sex with her, I would. Tigger: Well, depends on the woman. Roach: Yeah. If it's some Nancy Reaganlooking woman, then no. (a GAY TOURIST enters, wearing Mardi Gras necklaces and with a clear plastic cup of beer in hand, walks past the boys) Roach and Tigger: Spare change?
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
(the TOURIST glances quickly at ROACH, shakes his head no, and sets his half-empty cup on the sidewalk by a trash can; exits; TIGGER goes for the beer) Roach: Fuck him. Sneakin' peeks at my facial tat. (as TIGGER gets the beer, ROACH smiles and starts a private joke between them) Just say No! Tigger: No! (he drinks from the cup, offers ROACH the last swig) Tigger: (rooting through the trash can for food) We better make quick work of the schwillies, man. We gotta sp'ange enough for all weekend today; it's gonna rain tomorrow. Roach: How do you know that? Are you a weather man now? Tigger: I read it in the paper. Town is gonna be packed and we can make bank. The Clover has a sign welcoming some conference, so there's plenty of green around. We just gotta get it while the weather holds. [p. 201 ] Roach: (looks down the street) I've gotta meet that guy in a couple hours. (pulls out some partially-smoked cigarettes from his pocket, gives one to TIGGER; they both light up) Tigger: (worriedly) Right. I don't buy it. I don't trust him, Roach. Roach: (tries to reassure TIGGER but sounds doubtful) I'm not going to have anything on me. The guy holds the stuff. I just go find customers. I take them to him and he gives me a runner's fee. I'm not going to have the stuff on me. Tigger: Never in my life have I fucked with the needle. Roach: (insistent) I'm not using it, Tigger. I'm just running it.
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
Tigger: You've done it before, now you'll want to do it again. Roach: No! It's only a job. I'm going to get money so we can get a place and we can eat. (TIGGER does not look at him; impatiently as he sits) I'm a fuckin' slinger, man. I sell drugs on occasion. Tigger: Being around the needle, talking about the needle, makes me very uncomfortable. Fucks with my head. But if someone's gonna do it, they're gonna do it. I've seen itfriends dead. Roach: You snort coke with me, but if I try heroin with the guy I'm going to sell it for, that makes it wrong? You're such a fucking hypocrite! Tigger: No I'm not! You know what I think's going to happen? You're going to start slammin' it again. Roach: (singing the end of Neil Young's song to TIGGER) I've seen the needle and the damage done, a little part of it in everyone, but every junkie's like a setting sun. (laughs; pulls TIGGER by the arm) C'mon, let's get outta here. Tigger: (yanks his arm away from ROACH's grip) You do what you gotta do, I'll catch ya later. Roach: Tigger, Tigger: (as he exits) I'll be on the Square. Hook up with me when you're through. Roach: Tigger! Damn. (shouts after TIGGER) I hate it when we fight! We fight just like a couple of fucking married people! (pp. 146148) The italicized stage directions included throughout the dialogue above illustrate another critical element of theatre: The art form is both verbally and physically enacted on stage.
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
Stage Action
Show it, don't tell it is sage advice from those who develop theatrical productions for audiences because we become engaged with visual spectaclefrom the smallest hand property to the largest scenic changeon stage. But showing it is not just the designer's job, it is also the collaborative responsibility of the playwright, director, and actor. Directors and actors apply the principle when they realize the playwright's words during rehearsal through movement, gesture, facial reactions, hand properties, and other stage devices. Italicized stage directions are one of the most distinguishing textual features of contemporary [p. 202 ] dramatic literature. The playwright intersperses these throughout monologue and dialogue because it encourages him to think both verbally and visually. In Vanover and Saldaa's (2005) Chalkboard Concerto: Growing Up as a Teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, Vanover's original autoethnographic article, Attunement became the foundation for a one-man ethnodramatic adaptation. The monologue below is extracted verbatim from the original sourcea narrative originally read while Charles sat on a chair behind a table in a conference setting. When Saldaa co-adapted and directed the ethnodrama, the staging possibilities were almost inherent in the narrative since the text is active and richly descriptive. In this excerpt, Charles describes the energy inherent in an inner-city grade school classroom. Note how the stage directions specify the theatrical elements of sound, settings, voice, and physical actions for Charles to show during performance: Figure 17.3 Charles Vanover Begins Class in Vanover and Saldaa's Chalkboard Concerto: Growing Up as a Teacher in the Chicago Public Schools
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
(sound effect: noisy children in a classroom; CHARLES rises from his desk and paces back and forth quickly as he speaks to the audience) CHARLES: Children create an emotional energy. They change the way that you move and the way that you feel. Thirty poor kids, sixty eyes looking up at you, sixty hands, three hundred fingers, there's so much going on, there's so much happening, it never stops, the classroom never slows down! (sound effect out) If you can ride with it, if you can move with it, if you can figure out that (in a gentle voice, looking downward) [p. 203 ] this kid needs to be talked to in this way (in a harsh voice, looking at another child) and that kid needs to be talked to in that way, (in his regular voice, to the audience) if you can communicate, if you can join together, there's no better feeling. You become part of a whole, you create a dance, the classroom has a life of its own.
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You're not in control, but you are conducting. You fly! (crosses to chalkboard) You stand there in front of the chalkboard and look at each of those faces. You glance into each of those eyes. (he picks up a copy of Dr. Seuss's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish from the desk, stands in front of the audience to show them the book cover) Energy travels from them into you and then out and back again: One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. (he looks at the book admiringly and turns to a page) Just holding the yellow book in my hand and showing the pictures to the Head Start kids and reading those words: (holds the book to point at and show the illustrations to the audience) This one has a little star. This one has a little car. (he closes the book, looks at the audience) They were poor children. They were very poor children. (p. 68) Goodall (2000) writes that the best lens for fieldwork views human action dramatistically (p. 116). Elsewhere (Saldaa, 2003) I noted that ethnodrama becomes a valid mode of research representation and ethnotheatre a valid mode of research presentation when the art forms are the most effective way of documenting the lived experiences of participants. If you know from the beginning of a project that the representation and presentation of the research will be ethnotheatrical, fieldwork proceeds with dramatization of the social setting as one of its primary goals. Individual interviews and personal documents, such as journals, are not only for obtaining the participants' worldviews, but also sources for monologic foundations. Focus group
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interviews and observations of multiple participants interacting in a social setting provide the stimuli for dialogue and group scenes. Artifacts from the environment hold the potential for transfer onto the stage as scenic elements and properties.
produced from the beginning to tour accessibly to other locations. Touring generates additional audiences to see the work in performance rather than simply read the script with sometimes accompanying photographs. Some ethnotheatrical productions have been documented in media formats. Gray and Sinding's (2002) Standing Ovation: Performing Social Science Research About Cancer is accompanied with a studio-quality videotape of two ethnotheatrical performances. Commercially produced ethnodramas such as The Laramie Project (Kaufman & Members of the Tectonic Theater Project, 2001) and The Exonerated (Blank & Jensen, 2004) are also available in media formats, but it should be noted that original stage scripts are sometimes altered for television broadcast. Fourth, there are some scholars lacking basic theatre training exploring how to structure their research into ethnodramatic form. As a result, their play scripts often exhibit didactic contentintellectual debate rather than participant/character-driven action. The best ethnodramas I've read have been developed by those with theatrical experience, and their work stands as models for other ethnodramatists (See Saldaa, 2005). I do not want to discourage anyone from writing an ethnodrama if they are inspired to do so yet have no fine arts experience. I offer instead the ethic that any playwright should seek and be open to honest, constructive feedback from peers on the quality of their work. The ultimate merit and success of a play are constructed by the audience in attendancethe final arbiters of a play and its production.
Closure
A closet drama is a theatrical term for a play written to be read but not mounted on stage for performance. This is comparable to writing an exceptional research article but not bothering to get it published. Writing an ethnodrama is a vital first step, but the next is getting the script, at the very least, read aloud by a group of colleaguesand at best, mounting it on stage for performance in front of an audience. This is the true test of a play's effectiveness. [p. 205 ] Mounting theatre is not easy. Those not formally trained in the art sometimes believe that the technical elements of a production (e.g., lighting, scenery, sound) can
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be quickly and effortlessly assembled, and they most often underestimate the time needed for rehearsals. Some of the most impressive theatre I've witnessed has been elegant. Less is more. The focus on the actors and not the scenographic trappings places more demands on the performers, but if they are at optimal performance, the results can be outstanding. If the audience is receptive; if the director, designers, and performers are good at their craft; and if the script's content is meaningful to us in some way, then ethnotheatre works as research representation. These conditions are necessary prerequisites for the genre to be engaging and effective. This brief chapter cannot possibly include everything one needs to know about writing and staging ethnodrama. The References below will provide you with titles for additional reading. If you are interested in exploring this genre of research, but are not directly involved in theatrical production or performance studies, you are encouraged to contact and collaborate with artists at a university or professional venue who study and practice the art form. Each person will bring his or her own expertise to the venture to create original work that entertains ideas as well as its audiences.
Ethnodramatic Exercises
I've long thought that teaching and learning anthropology should be more fun than they often are. Perhaps we should not merely read and comment on ethnographies, but actually perform them. How, then, may this be done? One possibility may be to turn the more interesting portions of ethnographies into playscripts, then to act them out in class, and finally to turn back to ethnographies armed with the understanding that comes from getting inside the skin of members of other cultures. (Turner, 1982, pp. 8990) A standard playwriting exercise is to adapt and transform an existing nondramatic literary piece into a dramatic work. Several published titles in ethnography possess exciting dramatic potential and, as a practical conclusion, I offer the following sample exercises for novices to ethnodrama.
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
Alan Peshkin's (1986) God's Choice: The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian School
Objective: To capture the essence and essentials of an extended interview into a concise monologue for the stage. Exercise: Read Chapter 1 (Introduction: The Setting, the Author, the Times) and reduce Pastor William Muller's first-person account to a 7- to 10-minute monologue. Delete what is unnecessary for an audience member to know about the pastor and the school. Maintain what is vital and salient. Explore the rearrangement of text for a more logical flow and dramatic impact. List the best scenic pieces and hand properties (e.g., desk, chair, Bible) for the performance of this monologue on stage. Assessment: Recruit a university or professional actor to read aloud the monologue and ask him to assess its effectiveness from a performer's perspective. Reflect on the legitimacy of the reduced monologue as a credible and trustworthy representation of Pastor Muller. [p. 206 ]
Lisa M. Tillmann-Healy's (1996) A Secret Life in a Culture of Thinness: Reflections on Body, Food, and Bulimia
Objective: To adapt a prose narrative into a multiple-character scene portrayed by one actor. Exercise: Select a scene from Tillman-Healy's chapter with two or more characterparticipants (e.g., Cellulite, Weighing In, The Spaghetti Feed (and Other Meals),
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An Open Door, Common Bathroom). Develop monologic text, with stage directions, for a solo actor to portray the multiple character-participants included and described in the scene. Assessment: Recruit a university or professional actor to read aloud the monologue and ask her to assess its effectiveness from a performer's perspective. Reflect whether Tillman-Healy's story can be effectively performed by a solo actor, or whether multiple actors are needed for the dramatization and staging of the work.
Jennifer Toth's (1993) The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels beneath New York City
Objective: To adapt and transform narrative prose into dialogic form for the stage. Exercise: Select a chapter from Toth's account with multiple character-participants in narrative dialogue (e.g., Hell's Kitchen, Harlem Gang, J. C.'s Community). Adapt and dramatize an excerpt from the chapter into a 10- to 15-minute scene for the stage. Create original dialogue for the character-participants when Toth describes, rather than quotes, what they told her: [Ali M.] says he has studied literature, philosophy and writing. He has been a member of the working class, and he has experienced poverty. His anger comes from being left out of society. He has not rejected society, but it has rejected him, he says, cast him out because of his black skin. He still suffers from the conditioning he received aboveground, conditioning that still causes him to doubt his self-worth and question his own validity, he says. (pp. 199200) Explore how Toth, as a character, can be woven into the scene without narrating to the audience. Assessment: Recruit university or professional actors to read aloud the scene and ask them to assess its effectiveness from a performer's perspective. Reflect on the
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre
challenges of dramatizing a scene with multiple character-participants. Also reflect on the challenges of dramatizing an ethnographic account as a secondary source for an ethnodramatic adaptation, and the legitimacy (i.e., ethics, credibility, and trustworthiness) of inventing dialogue not documented in the original account. #SOURCE: From Saldaa, J., Finley, S., & Finley, M., Street rat, in Ethnodrama: An anthology of reality theatre, pp. 139179, copyright 2005. Used with the permission of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452226545.n17
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Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues: 17 Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre