Performed Ethnography and Research-Informed Theatre: A Reflective Assessment

Abstract

Performed ethnography and research-informed theatre scripts can be difficult to evaluate. They are hybrid texts created by practices that have evolved in two different worlds each with multiple ways of evaluating the strengths and limitations of individual projects. In this article, I use Laurel Richardson's five criteria for evaluating “creative analytic practices” as a framework to assess the strengths and limitations of my latest research-informed play Harriet's House. In doing so, I hope to illustrate how the framework might be used by other playwrights and researches to assess both their own and other people's performed ethnography and research-informed theatre projects.

Notes

¹While ethnography is characterized by a researcher's use of participant observation and interviews to gain an understanding of a group's culture and is usually written in the third person, autoethnography is characterized by a researcher's desire to understand his/her own cultural experience and is written in the first person.