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Paper short abstract

What kind of thinking-through is ethnographic theatre? Reflecting on Tiny Human Dramas, a theatre company producing plays based on ethnographic research, I argue that the encounter between anthropologists, artists, and others reveals how empathy emerges—and when it is interrupted.

Paper long abstract

What kind of thinking-through is ethnographic theatre? In this paper, I argue that ethnographic theatre thinks through encounter. I reflect on two years as a director of Tiny Human Dramas, a fringe theatre company that produces short plays based on ethnographic research. Tiny Human Dramas’ plays are created in under 24 hours by teams of theatre artists working together with an anthropologist. Plays are then shown back-to-back in an evening of theatre, followed by a discussion with the audience. The bounded time-space of the performance produces a suspended encounter between research subjects, anthropologists, artists, and audience. Each brings with them a unique constellation of motivations, insight, and experience. These collaborations elide the ‘here and not here’ (Madison), unfold in space (Gatt) collaboratively (Kazubowski-Houston) and affectively (Giordano and Pierotti), yet transpire ‘alchemically’ (Vidali) through the immediacy of live performance and human relationships. By examining how a few of these plays developed, I argue that ethnographic performance does its thinking via such encounters and the forms of immediate, relational compromise they entail. Mediated primarily by artists and anthropologists, these compromises are deeply concerned with the audience and those researched. This means that aspirations of ethnographic discovery collide with concerns about the ethics of representation and engaging the audience. Rather than seeing such collisions as troubling challenges, I consider them as fundamental characteristics of ethnographic theatre. This paper asks what kind of anthropological theory ethnographic theatre can generate. I argue that ethnographic theatre reveals how strategies for empathy emerge through complex, other-oriented encounters.