Ethnodrama

Purposes and Goals of Ethnodrama

Ethnodrama, as a form of arts-based research, is a representational and presentational mode of ethnographic reporting chosen by the researcher or artist when the dramatic genre and theatrical medium will create the most credible, vivid, and persuasive portrait of the participants' culture and lived experiences and, hence, an informative, emotion-generating, and aesthetic experience for its readers and/or viewers (assuming a well-developed script, sound production values, and a receptive audience). Producers of ethnotheater may have varied goals for their work, ranging from basic education of its audiences about a particular culture, to social change agendas for motivating discussion and action toward the unjust, to artistic yet for-profit ventures produced by the commercial theater industry.

Ethnodramatic Playwriting

Ethnodramas are as varied in style as the historic and contemporary canons of dramatic literature. Some ethnodramas may be scripted as verbatim, slice-of-life naturalism to replicate authentic social interaction on-stage. Others may be scripted and produced as direct address presentations, incorporating theatrical devices such as abstract movement, poetic choral speech, projected media, and evocative background music.

Ethnodrama, like traditional dramatic literature, is most often composed as monologue and/or dialogue and is usually accompanied with stage directions. The primary sources of an ethnodramatic text are the participants' lived experiences, which can emerge from the researcher himself or herself as autoethnographer, to qualitative or ethnographic fieldwork with everyday citizens whose lives and perspectives have been documented and then adapted into dramatic narrative form. [Page 284]Playwrights of ethnodramas must consider the balance between naturalistic authenticity and the creative interpretation of reality—each a legitimate style for the staged performance of social life, but artistic choices that may affect the production's and research project's credibility and aesthetic impact on its audiences.

As a brief example of naturalistic reconstruction of dialogue, refer to the sidebar with an excerpt from the ethnodrama Street Rat. This conversational exchange among three teenage girls orients the audience to the culture of runaway youth. (Their references to “Roach” and “Tigger” are about teenage boys who also live with them.) Street Rat's primary data sources were interviews with homeless youth in New Orleans conducted by Susan Finley during the late 1990s coupled with her son Macklin Finley's personal observations, lived experiences, and evocative poetry of street life in the city. Johnny Saldaña, as primary adapter and director of the ethnotheatrical production, reassembled the Finleys' body of nondramatic creative work into playscript form and, after conducting participant observation fieldwork in New Orleans, staged the play with authentic regional artifacts, music, and costuming to represent the cultures depicted in the drama.

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