Short Abstract:

This lab is aimed to re-experience dilemmas or incidents from our fieldworks. Inspired by the 'Playback Theater' method, we will improvise as actors enacting different roles in time and space. Number of participants is limited and pre-registration is needed: https://goo.gl/forms/XP4Q0xNeYxuUJ0aW2

Long Abstract:

Anthropologists are always on the move: in and out the field, in between identities, and along with academic stages. As a result, different voices and varied roles emerge and participate in the holistic process of the ethnographic research. These different layers of mobility are embodied in the fieldwork that is comprised of internal dialogues, external negotiations over definitions, and delineation of research borders in correspondence with an imagined professional community.

In this lab, we wish to 'import' these multivocalities and temporalities that are located both at the fieldwork's backstage and frontstage. Inspired by the "Playback Theatre" method we will explore situations from our research experience and turn them into scenes. By using modes of performance inside the bounded space of the lab, we invite the participants to re-experience dilemmas from fieldworks and henceforth raise our collective and individual consciousness. Adopting theatrical mode will enable us to share situations that we experience alone, and reflect together upon the ethnographer's acts and decisions making. The performance, as a simulation carried out in a safe environment followed by discussion, is aimed to deconstruct the holistic attribute of fieldwork and add to the methodological ethnographic toolkit. The participants in the lab will be able to observe their ethnographic engagements, but also to take part as gatekeepers - the local informants or academic colleagues - all actors in the field-theatre. Remember: in this 'field-theater' lab, all the field is a stage and all the observed-participants merely players.

Pre-registration via here: https://goo.gl/forms/XP4Q0xNeYxuUJ0aW2