[Last modified: November, 25 2024 11:38 AM]
Theatre of the Oppressed is an interesting research technique to help uncover people’s beliefs without directly asking them. Why did they assume a certain gender or status of an actor? What cultural norms did they act out in a conflict? It also has the benefit of being an embodied practice, which gives you additional information that an interview alone could not.
The collaborative nature of the exercise also takes the researcher out of the outsider role and into the activity with participants, which can help diminish the power dynamics that exist in a conventional interviewer/participant relationship. In this practice, the researcher is as much a participant as everyone else.
Ideally data would be collected by video to preserve as much of the spect-actors original wording and physicality as possible. On the other hand, the presence of a camera might make participants nervous and discourage full participation. Having someone present to take notes could be an option, but that would still disrupt the exercise. Ultimately it will depend on the context and who your participants are. There would need to be a balance of gathering as much firsthand data as possible while maintaining an open, trusting space for participation.
There are a number of ethical considerations in using Theatre of the Oppressed as a research method. One is that the situation being acted out might be distressing for participants. Secondly, not everyone might feel comfortable participating, which means that the data collected would be largely from people who felt comfortable speaking in front of a crowd. Another consideration might be how involved the researcher is in the activity, and whether their participation would impact the way participants engage with the activity. Lastly, depending on where you’re conducting your research, language might be a barrier. Though language is still a consideration in interviews, participating in an improvised activity would require a better grasp of the language your participants speak.
I think this could be an interesting research technique for my pilot project, especially as it relates to gender power structures. I think this could be an interesting way to discover more subconscious attitudes about gender roles, sexuality, and power that might not come out in an interview. The benefit of doing an activity like Theatre of the Oppressed is that it allows you to address sensitive topics without having to ask directly about them. I think it would be important to pair the activity with a semi-stuctured or unstructured interview to also get participant’s own reflections on the activity, which would provide another interesting data point.