Performed Ethnography and Communication Improvisation and Embodied Experience

Performed Ethnography and Communication explores the relationships between these three key terms, addressing the impact of ethnography and communication on the cutting edge of performance studies. Ranging from digital performance, improvisation and the body, to fieldwork and staged collaboration, this volume is divided into two main sections: "Embodied technique and practice," which addresses improvisation, devised theatre-making, and body work to consider what makes bodies move, sound, behave, mean, or appear differently, and the effects of these differences on performance; "Oral history and personal narrative performance," which is concerned with the ways personal stories and histories might be transformed into public events, looking at questions of perspective, ownership, and reception. Including specific historical and theoretical case studies, exercises and activities, and practical applications for improvisation, ethnography, and devised and digital performance, Performed Ethnography and Communication represents an invaluable resource for today’s student of performance studies, communication studies or cultural studies.

List of figuresAcknowledgmentsPrologueIntroduction PART 1 Embodied technique and practice Chapter 1 Embodied technique and practice Technique Practice Interview with Ben Spatz Examples of technique and practice Case study one: Digital Portobelo with Renee Alexander Craft Chapter 2 Improvisation The inherited body we bring to performance practice Key concepts in improvisational acting and performance Examples Chapter 3 Devised theatre Ethnographic data and process Suggested stagesfor devised performance In summary Interview with Honey Pot Performance Case study two: the digital in dialogic performance across two continents Chapter 4 Movement and scenes of body work Warm-up improvisations for neutral mask Efforts and factors from Laban/Bartenieff Improvisation exercises for efforts and factors Improvisational exercises for BESS The 5Rhythms from Gabrielle Roth Augusto Boal and Newspaper Theatre PART 2 Oral history and personal narrative performance Chapter 5 The value of oral history and life story Who owns the story? Interview with E. Patrick Johnson Oralhistory as permission, public pedagogy, and provocation On truth Chapter 6 The narrative/narrated event and the anatomy of emotion The narrative event The narrated event Case study three: holograms in a live staging of history: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire Chapter 7 Anatomy of emotion: the brain, performance, and oral history Proprioception Mirror neurons and simulation theory Chapter 8 Performing oral history and life stories Solo performance Exercises Chapter 9 Viewpoints in rehearsal Examples Selected viewpoints for oral history and performance Case study four: the storyteller's magnified embodiments in real-time telling Chapter 10 Jerzy Grotowski's plastiques and Viola Spolin's speech and sound The brain of the body and the body of the brain Interview with Stephen Wangh Examples Epilogue: the intermix of performance, ethnography, and communicationAppendix: illustration of creativity and the brainBibliographyIndex

D. Soyini Madison is Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, USA.