[Last modified: November, 25 2024 11:36 AM]
Participating in the forum theatre exercise was, first of all, a lot of fun. It brought back many memories from high school when I was part of a theatre company. However, it was also quite challenging because (as a chronically shy person) I was not very familiar with many of the other participants and (as a chronic perfectionist) I was new to the concept of forum theatre completely. It was a very playful way to engage with one another and anthropological concepts since the collective experience also sparked discussions on power dynamics, reflexivity, and positionality.
Theatre and performance could be seen as part of a multimodal approach to ethnographic research, blurring the lines between scientific research and artistic production. They represent an opportunity to be playful and a way of co-creating knowledge starting from dialogues and collaboration. Applying forum theatre to research might be a unique way to be part of a community and engage with them. Speaking in more blunt research terms, it could also represent an opportunity to gather vignettes and emic insights from the performances. However, I feel like the researcher’s position must be explicit, and all participants/performers must have given their consent. Since the theatre is a safe space to open up and lay bare their emotions, it can bring up very vulnerable positions, and people must be aware that their shared experiences might end up as mere data. Reflecting on some of the points discussed in class, I agree that it might represent a playful way to overcome hierarchies in research. However, it also depends on the role of the researcher during the performance. To draw a parallelism with the class exercise, Noa and Nathan were obviously not on the same level as the rest of the participants, because of their academic background and previous acting experience. Translating this situation on the field might mean reproducing power imbalances yet again. To overcome them, it might be best for the researcher to join an existing theatre group on the field, to be truly part of the community, or to even be in a slightly lower position if they were an “outsider” to that community. When introducing the concept of forum theatre, it should also be key not to impose that structure as fixed, but to be playful and just see what comes out of it, that is, the same mindset one should have when doing ethnographic research on the field.