Short Abstract

This panel is all about theatre, play, and performance. Hosted by the Theatre From The Field collective, we take you on a journey to explore how physical theatre, object theatre, dance, and other forms of multimodal storytelling can open more inclusive horizons for anthropology and anthropologists.

Long Abstract

This panel showcases performances from the Theatre from the Field collective. Audience members will be led on a journey across the Adam Mickiewicz University, discovering ethnographically-inspired performances that question the politics and power of the conference space and explore the ‘care’ we all long for in neoliberal academia. The panel also hosts presentations from other theatre-worker anthropologists to build a reflective conversation about the relationship between theatre and ethnographic practice.

Theatre from the Field is an ongoing theatre-anthropology project designed to encourage researchers to engage their whole body in intellectual discovery. We host workshops and create performances that centre non-verbal knowledge and tap into the deep emotionality of ethnographic work.

Thematically, we are interested in affect and care - not as concepts - but as actual embodied practices. Affect theory has long encouraged us to attend to the embodied dimensions of knowledge, yet anthropology often struggles to recognize and utilize the knowledge embedded within our own bodies. Decolonial scholars have highlighted the ongoing reproduction of phallogocentric knowledge within what bell hooks aptly termed 'imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy' (Ahmed 2004; Tuck 2009; Todd 2016; Mignolo 2018). Theatre practitioners, actors, and dancers understand the generative potential of using the body as an expressive tool, a site of co-creation, and a source of alternative epistemologies. Practice-based research and embodied forms of knowing demand opportunities to cultivate these techniques (Spatz 2015).

To build a truly multi-epistemological anthropology, we must move beyond text to explore how embodied, collaborative practices can fundamentally reshape ethnographic knowledge production. Oh, and we also need to find more ways to connect, release, share, and enjoy experimenting with each other!

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