Frictions and Actions: The Actor’s Role in Ethnodrama

Introduction

Although there is a growing body of literature about ethnodrama and ethnotheater, little of it focuses upon the role of the actor. This article will look at the preparation, rehearsal, and learnings of one actor, Vachon (who will be the person designated when “I” is used), within an ethnotheater process. The term ethnodrama and ethnotheater are being used to denote different and specific ideas. Saldaña (2008) wrote that ethnotheater is “preparatory fieldwork for theatrical production work” (p. 195), while ethnodrama is “the written script” which is “dramatizing the data” (p. 196). “Ethnoperformance” will be used to denote the actual performance of the ethnodrama script, which, in the case of this project, was used as a site for further data collection. This article is a collaborative process between researchers and actor, a relationship that came out of a research project called Health and Equity through Advocacy, Research, and Theatre (HEART—for more information, see http://www.niagaraknowledgeexchange.com/resources-publications/heart-program-handbook/). Depending upon context, “we” may signify Vachon and researchers, or it may signify the actors who worked on this project—this will (hopefully) be clear to the reader.

HEART is a participatory action research program that combines qualitative health research, research-based theater, and public advocacy to address issues of health equity for marginalized populations. The program is focused on creating the basis for “patient-centered policymaking” in health systems. This is done through the engagement of marginalized patients as change agents and partners in the design of health care services, an initiative that may be accomplished effectively through ethnodrama and ethnoperformance. Theater, as a form, has been found to have potential as “a powerful and effective tool for engaging members of the public in regard to a health-policy issue that is scientifically and morally complex, emotionally charged, and controversial” (Nisker, Martin, Bluhm, & Daar, 2006).

Theater practitioners have long been observing, analyzing, and presenting the world around them in attempts to create performances that are “morally complex, emotionally charged, and controversial.” The dictum “write what you know” calls on authors to compose scripts from their own lived reality. Some might think of this as a loose form of autoethnography. There are numerous artists working with “data” who do not see themselves as researchers or their plays as ethnodramas. Indeed, some may not even be aware of ethnodrama, as a term or concept. Nevertheless, they are doing research to create theater. I would locate myself into this group. I first learned the terms ethnodrama and ethnotheater in 2015 after spending over two decades working as an actor, writer, dramaturge, and director with multiple groups bringing their stories to the stage. Popular plays such as The Crucible, London Road, The Laramie Project, and Come From Away all draw directly upon historical documents and/or interviews with people portrayed on stage. Although many would not call these ethnotheater, they certainly draw upon the same tools.

The HEART program set out to identify, combine, and codify the research methods available to ethnodrama, and rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of research-based theater using formal qualitative and quantitative research measures as part of the project. Sixteen interviews were conducted with individuals who identified as homeless or vulnerably housed and who had experiences accessing health care in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada, within the preceding 5 years. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify 22 barriers and 15 facilitators to accessing health care. The interview transcripts, themes, and “narrative codes” (Rossiter, Gray, et al., 2008) were shared with Branch Out Theatre, a professional theater company from Toronto, Canada, which led to the production of the written script, Gerbils. Gerbils was informally “validated” through a play reading with 21 community members who shared similar lived experiences to the original research participants, and who could corroborate the veracity of the play. Their suggestions were incorporated into the final script.

For this project, “Legislative Theatre” was selected as the preferred mode of “public and patient engagement” (Abelson et al., 2016) because of its proven potential for social change. Pioneered by Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theater director and Vereador (City councilor) in Rio de Janeiro, Legislative Theater was used by Boal and 19 theater groups in the city to generate and pass 13 laws between 1992 and 1996 (Boal, 1998). In Legislative Theater, audiences are invited to watch a drama about the experiences of a particular community that is struggling against an oppressor or social injustice. Following the initial presentation, the drama is then performed a second time, but now individual audience members are encouraged by a facilitator (termed a “Joker” by Boal) to stop the action of the scene during moments of heightened conflict and, traditionally, assume the role of the oppressed character (moving from passive spectator to what Boal calls, “spect-actor”) to improvise and attempt to solve the depicted problem(s) (Boal, 1998; Pratt & Johnston, 2007; Stuttaford et al., 2006). This structure is also the process used within Boal’s earlier innovation, Forum Theater, and both Forum and Legislative Theater are part of Boal’s “Theater of the Oppressed” (TO) methodology. What moves Forum into Legislative Theater is the recording of the improvisations and translation of these into a bill of law.

In addition to Boal’s work, Legislative Theater has also been employed successfully by Theater for Living in British Columbia & Alberta, Canada, with their production of maladjusted, a play which responded to the mechanization of the mental health system (Diamond, 2015). The rich history of Legislative Theater was significant for inspiring confidence that a research-based, Legislative Theater performance could function as an effective intervention that would create opportunities for marginalized populations to participate in the decision-making process within regional health systems.

Gerbils, authored by Naomi Tessler from Branch Out Theatre, follows the protagonist Neil, a middle-aged man who moves from friends’ couches, to shelters, to sleeping on the street. The play opens and closes with a contextualizing monologue, which is taken verbatim from interview transcripts. Below, are the opening lines performed by the character Hope. Hope is a homeless female who, as the lights come up, sits onstage shaking a cup with coins in it (during the bolded text, Neil, who is upstage right collecting bottles, also says the lines):

When I turned sixteen, she was, “Get out,” so I became homeless.

I’m on a waiting list for life, long days, long days,

my heart’s good, still beating, I’m still breathing,

just don’t know where I’m sleeping.

Never know night to night who’s going to be sleeping beside you,

what drugs they’re going to be on.

Trying to figure out where I’m going to go, what I need to do, how to get there.

This isn’t really what I would call home, but it’s somewhere.

It’s not like I’m just sitting here.

I’m a person.

The themes of being kicked out, intentionally ignored, dismissed, not knowing, and trying to claim personhood run throughout the play. Over the initial 25-min performance, we follow Neil as he tries to access health care for his depression and bipolar disorder from a walk-in clinic, a shelter, a psychiatrist, and as he later presents for suicidal thoughts to a hospital. In three of the four locations, he faces barriers. The one place of support is the local shelter, where a worker helps him get an appointment with a psychiatrist, and another resident reaches out to support him. In the three health care settings, there are opportunities for the spect-actors to replace Neil, or other characters, to change the outcome for Neil.

The title comes from Neil’s appointment with the psychiatrist, Dr. Spokan. In this scene, Dr. Spokan, asks Neil what medication he is on:

This identification of Neil as a “test object,” a gerbil, is taken verbatim from one of the transcripts.

Gerbils was performed 3 times, each for separate audiences. Once for students, once for health care professionals, and once for members of the street-involved/homeless community. The process of Legislative Theater as conceptualized by Boal was largely replicated, with the addition of an “expert panel” of municipal, hospital, health system, social service, and community representatives who would observe the spect-actors and generate policy ideas at the event. These policies would then be discussed with the audience, debated, amended, and voted upon for confirmation into a “policy brief” to be later compiled by the research team. The three performances were also evaluated as a form of knowledge translation, public and patient engagement in health-policy development, and as an intervention to change attitudes toward the homeless among care providers and students.

Frictions

Gerbils was a diligently dramaturged and well-crafted ethnodrama based upon coded transcripts. The actors that were hired were carefully chosen by the director (the same person as the playwright) because of our acting skills and experience with Forum Theater; yet, none of us had done anything quite like Gerbils. We were theater artists, with minimal awareness of research in general, and ethnotheater in particular. As actors, lacking experience or training in the form, we relied on our TO and performing expertise for the production. This became the central way we related to the project. As we (the actors & Joker) drove to and from shows, which were about 100 km away from where we all lived, we talked about the play, the process, and the performances. Reflecting upon these conversations, and my personal experience acting in Gerbils, I identified six frictions, which are discussed below. I’m using the term “frictions” both in the sense of contact resulting in resistance, and stimulation.

Friction One: Responsibility to

The choice to use ethnotheater as a research methodology is a choice to work with actors. Yet, the “agenda’s” of actors are not always the same, or necessarily congruent with those of researchers. This became apparent during the production of Gerbils. Below are six different foci identified under Friction one (Responsibility to . . .) from the production of Gerbils. As an actor, the challenge became considering when one focus takes precedence, and the implications if one excluded another.

In his seminal work, Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal (1979) argued that all theater is political. Drawing upon Aristotle’s Poetics and Nicomachaen Ethics, Boal claims that “Aristotle’s coercive system of tragedy” (p. x) was designed to teach the passive spectator the dominant ideology of the state. This indoctrination is done through creating audience identification with the “good” protagonist on stage. The spectators see themselves in this hero, and consequently see themselves as the hero. Once the hero has captured the hearts, minds, and soul of the audience, the hero’s “tragic flaw” is revealed. This flaw, which resides within all of us, leads to the hero’s misfortune. Faced with misfortune, the hero is forced to recognize the horrible error(s) they have made. And the audience, who has developed empathy for the character, is forced to face their own. The spectator sees their flaws, and understands the consequences of acting upon the less heroic aspects of their self. In tragedy, the outcome must be, and always is, catastrophic. The flaw is punished and the hero suffers, usually through their own death or that of someone they love. The audience bearing witness to their own looming death experiences catharsis: “The spectator, terrified by the spectacle of the catastrophe, is purified of his hamartia [tragic flaw]” (Boal, 1979, p. 37).

In TO, the spectator becomes a “spect-actor.” The audience is no longer a passive seated recipient of the “coercive system of tragedy” that operates on stage, television, movies, opera, and elsewhere. Rather, they become agents of their own lives, on stage, and off. The spect-actor is invited onto the stage to embody and change the outcome of the characters portrayed. According to Boal (1979), “it is necessary to eliminate the private property of the characters by the individual actors” (p. 119). The characters do not belong to the actors, they do not belong to the playwright, they do not belong to the state, and by extension, they do not belong to the researcher. It is the audience who is the primary focus of the play, the spectator turned into actor, into agent of analysis, understanding, and change.

As a theater artist, I want to create an aesthetically engaging experience. Drawing on the work of Alrutz (2015), I reach for affect and effect, striving for a theater that is transportive (moving the audience into another world and experiencing something new) and/or transgressive (moving against and beyond boundaries, a theater that moves toward freedom). When working on a script as an actor, I spend a great deal of time considering how to portray “my” character. I reflect upon, and make numerous character choices, considering movement, intentions, vocalizations, emotional states, and many other factors when deciding what to bring to the stage. I analyze the lines my character says and the lines that others say about “me.” I develop a history that is congruent with the story, but fills in the many gaps present in all scripts. I improvise scenes that are alluded to, or that I decide have happened. This is all done to serve the experience of the audience, to bring life to the character.

Saldaña (2011), in discussing ethnotheater actors, writes,

The character/participants are the soul of ethnodrama. All of the design elements discussed thus far contribute nothing to ethnotheatrical production without good actors. You may have an outstanding script with emotionally gripping monologue and dialogue, but without rich interpretations and solid performances, audiences will be less likely to care about the play and its issues. (p. 142)

Outstanding script, emotionality, rich interpretations, and solid performances are all aspects of aesthetics. Saldaña, however, writes of these as though there is a universal sense of aesthetics. This is not so. Aesthetics are always informed by specific cultural and personal social locations that are determined by multiple factors, and may shift over time, learning, and exposure.

For theater artists, decisions are made based upon who the audience is, what they want the audience to leave with, and, as Boal identified, the agenda of the production. In creating ethnotheater, one must consider the cultural, ethical, relational, and economic elements of aesthetics. Social aesthetics “argues for, and investigates the details of, the many ways in which our interactions with art participate in or service an array of political orientations and social cultural processes” (Born, Lewis, & Straw, 2017, p. 3). When theater artists want to create “an aesthetically engaging experience,” the values and positions within this phrase must be critiqued. The actor, the director, the spect-actor, and the researcher, all arrive with their own aesthetic.

Sixteen interviews were conducted with homeless and vulnerably housed adults. The interviews were turned into anonymized transcripts. These transcripts, and the themes identifying barriers and facilitators to health care, comprised the data which the script was based upon. The script included a combination of verbatim and adapted text, modified to form a clear narrative. Verbatim transcripts can be difficult to make dialogue from, given the structure of most interview formats. Hence, the endless monologues seen in a great many verbatim productions (see, for example, any play by Anna Deavere Smith). Qualitative research interviews are frequently a question and answer structure and do not always easily adapt from transcript to script. For some researchers (but certainly not all; see, for example, Bird, Donelan, Sinclair, & Wales, 2010; MacNeill, 2015; Saldaña, 2011), the idea of doing scene improvisation as a form of data gathering, which also leads to compelling and dramatic moments, could be considered manipulative and unethical, thus verboten. Verbatim text lends itself very well to monologues, but less well to how people speak on stage.

Beyond a “do no harm” ethic when involved in research, there is also an increasing recognition of an imperative to benefit those whose are the “objects” of the research. Indeed, in mirroring the shift from Aristotle to Brecht (regarding the “autonomy” of characters and actors on stage shifting from object to subject), there has been a parallel shift in qualitative research. Denzin and Lincoln (2000) have described what they call the seventh moment: “In the seventh moment, the criteria for evaluating critical qualitative work are moral and ethical . . . this is a political, ethical, and aesthetic position” (Denzin, 2001, p. 4). Asking people to share their lives beholdens researchers to honor those people. An ethical stance regarding Gerbils would be to place the stories of those who shared their experiences at the forefront, and to always treat their stories—their lives—from an ethical position. As actors, this means we prioritize and honor those people who shared themselves with the researchers. Yet, it is difficult to ensure one is honoring the lives of those they only know through multiple filters: questions asked by original interviewers, interviews transcribed, transcription anonymized, transcript coded by researchers, codes and transcript given to playwright with specific codes identified as important for the ethnodrama, data turned into script, script shared during a play reading, and then, the finalized script given to actors. One need only remember the game of broken telephone (and then add an institutional review board [IRB] process) to imagine what the actors receive. One way that this was addressed in Gerbils was by the actors asking for copies of the anonymized transcripts, which were provided.

Research is a highly structured, and regulated, endeavor (Monette, Sullivan, Dejong, & Hilton, 2014). The researchers from HEART put tremendous thought, time, energy, and commitment into creating HEART, and this particular project. Indeed, their intention is to design a new methodology that can be manualized and replicated. The researchers had a very specific and well-thought-out design they were wanting to use, with strict procedures developed for the research to be valid, robust, ethical, useful, and replicable. The choices were made based upon multiple factors, much of which was never shared with the actors. The decision to not share the long process that led up to hiring the actors was done in an effort to expedite the process, and because there was no recognition (at least initially) from any of the parties (including the actors) that it was needed. The researchers were also the ones who raised the funds for the research and hired the theater company to develop and perform the play.

The research team initially identified a research question, developed a research design, collected and analyzed the data, drew conclusions, and then hired the theater company to create an aesthetically engaging play. Yet, despite being hired to design an aesthetically effective way to collect more data, it was obvious that there were some decisions the artistic team could not make. This lack of autonomy (and lack of understanding on our part) led to disquiet. Frictions caused fissures. The actors started to question the legitimacy and value of the procedures, which ultimately led to some questions regarding the value of the project. These frictions may have been ameliorated by having a theater practitioner with significant ethnoperformance knowledge being part of the research team from the beginning. To have an artist present when developing the research procedures.

Perhaps the most selfish of the foci, it is nonetheless a legitimate concern, as anyone who has ever tried to make a living in the arts knows. For most of the thousands of actors scraping together a living in Toronto, work is difficult to get. Indeed, of the three actors on this script, all of us have other work to supplement our theater income (or the other way around). There is great competition to find acting jobs, and employment is frequently based upon existing relationships. Although I was never put into a position where I had to “take sides,” or explicitly choose Procedure Focus over Career Focus (or the opposite), there were certainly moments when differences of opinion made this choice apparent. It is a reality that in any theater (and research) context, differences happen and choices need to be made. The theater tends to be a hierarchical space, as the producer, the director, and the playwright frequently seem to take precedence over the actors in decision making. As an actor, I know I can suggest something, maybe even try it, but ultimately it is the decision of the director. I can think of one play, in particular, where I was not hired based upon choices I made during the staged reading, which contrasted with the vision of the playwright. Sometimes, as actors, we make the choice that is the “selfish” one, the one that is more likely to lead to further work.

Although it is not pleasant (and may even be seen as distasteful or crass) to place ethics, aesthetics, and economics within the same decision-making rubric, in the arts, one must consider how one is going to pay the rent (or mortgage, for a select few). This, of course, is not exclusive to actors. The well-known dictum to “publish or perish” speaks to this in an academic context. There are many stunning examples of blatant dishonesty, falsifying data, ethical breaches, and otherwise career (or economic) decisions that prove just how prevalent such a focus is—and how much it can distort the stated intention of a project.

This may seem obvious and clear. The accumulation and analysis of data is precisely what research does. Of course, the focus is upon the research. However, as I have tried to show above, there is so much more than data collection which must be considered within ethnotheater (and likely, many other forms of research). This became evident when there were differences of opinion regarding how to proceed in the midst of a performance. The Joker and some actors wanted to allow a representative from the expert panel, as discussed above, to come onto the stage to change the scene. The researchers had given that person a particular role, and thus prohibited the intervention, thinking it would taint the data (see “Friction Four” below for a greater discussion of this situation). The actors had a TO Focus, and we wanted to allow all parties to have a “voice” in the intervention and to have as many different perspective as possible presented on stage. The researchers had a Research Focus, as they wanted to adhere to the procedures outlined in their methodology and, of course, adhere to the approved ethics protocol. The friction here was one of competing understandings of purpose. Seeing the project through an Aesthetic or TO Focus potentially disrupts the data collection and risks contaminating the data.

Friction Two: Insiders and Outsiders

In several important ways, the actors and Joker were outsiders. We were neither part of the community (physically, professionally, or culturally) the play was being performed for, nor from where the data had originated. All the actors were living in Toronto while the play took place in a smaller city about a 1.5-hr drive away. None of us were medical students, physicians, or street-involved. We were not part of the original research team. (I write “original,” because, as will be suggested later, I think the actors became researchers.) The actors did not interview any of the people the script was based upon, have conversations with them, or listen to audio recordings of the interviews. The actors were given many (but not all) of the anonymized, and coded, transcripts upon request.

For many verbatim projects, the actors who perform the play are the same people who do the original interviews. The most well-known example of this is likely The Laramie Project, a play by the Tectonic Theater Project. The cast, director, and other members of the company went to Laramie, Wyoming, about 5 weeks after the murder of Matthew Sheppard, a young gay man. While there, they conducted over 200 interviews and then used those to create the script and performance of the show (Tectonic Theater Project, n.d.).

In an attempt to be as vocally close as possible to the original interviewees, some verbatim theater actors listen to recordings of interviews as a way to develop “their” character (see, for example, Hammond & Steward, 2008; Smith, 1993). This allows actors to “find the voice,” and take on the intonations, cadence, pitch, and other vocal aspects of the people interviewed. In her early work, Alecky Blythe had actors wearing headphones and listening to the original interview recordings, while performing on stage (Blythe, 2008). This is an attempt at becoming an insider, while still being an actor. In rehearsal, Anna Deavere Smith listens to recordings of her interviews as she works on her lines (although not while performing in front of an audience). When watching Smith perform, her ability to embody different characters is astounding. However, for me, it also goes beyond recreating what is said by the interviewees. All verbatim theater is edited. The words are arranged, some moved, others removed. Viewing Smith reminds me of looking at Photoshopped images. It’s not the moment she delivers; it’s a framed, edited, and enhanced moment. Verbatim theater filters and augments the text. An example would be Blythe’s most famous work, London Road, which is a verbatim musical play based upon the Ipswich serial murders of five sex workers in Ipswich, England, in 2006.

Perhaps insider ethnotheater is best represented when members of a community write and perform the play for an audience from the same community. The vast majority of theater is written, performed, and seen by people outside of those portrayed. There is nothing wrong with this. I would quickly become bored of theater if all I saw was my own story on stage. And actors can portray characters, such as Smith above, in ways that those not trained are unlikely to be able to do. In Gerbils, the actors were outsiders performing for insiders. This can be a difficult position: one that has much value and one that requires some considerations. To perform for particular communities, it is useful for actors to know what is verbatim text, what is not, what is hybrid, and what is “inspired by.” I was unclear which characters were composites, and which were based upon a single individual from the transcript. Knowing that an audience member may be someone I’m portraying on stage changes how I might approach my preparation as compared with a character not based upon a specific person. Furthermore, it is useful to know what in the script is “real” and what is constructed. It was only into the run that I was told the names of streets and places were made-up. I had assumed that the audience would be familiar with geographic markers. The character I portrayed commits suicide at the end of the play by lying down on the train tracks, a choice that was based upon actual events. While working on this article, I found out that four members of the community had killed themselves by the train. Two of the interviewees had known, and spoke about these people in their interviews.

Taking text outside of context risks “text-con.” Outsider audiences may feel deceived if they think that they are seeing/hearing verbatim theater when in reality they are witnessing “based upon actual events.” Insider audiences may be confused, dismissive, or upset if too much liberty is taken, or if the actors are misrepresenting their lives. There is nothing wrong with editing, shifting, composing, filtering, or enhancing to make ethnodrama or ethnotheater. Audiences accept the singing in the musical London Road. However, ethnotheater is research. It must adhere to ethics and transparency. This means that audiences need to know what they are seeing and actors know what they are performing.

Friction Three: Competing Frames

When performing a monologue, one of the first questions I ask myself is, “Who am I speaking to?” Knowing who I am speaking to informs how I speak. As an actor (and of course in real life), to whom I say “I love you” can change completely the meaning and intention of the line. The actor must know if the character is talking to another character on stage, to a character not on stage, to a character never seen, to themselves, or to the audience. The role of audiences is increasingly studied as an area of analysis beyond box office, particularly when it comes to intention, impact, and interaction of the theater production (Thompson, 2009; White, 2013). When doing ethnoperformance, the audience becomes an essential component of the process. All theater performances are ultimately for the audience, but in ethnoperformance, the play is designed for a specific audience, to elicit responses, which are then recorded. Ethnoperformance puts frames around the production.

Alrutz (2015) has proposed the different phases of experience that an audience goes through in a Digital Storytelling Applied Theater process. For this, she draws upon the work of Anthony R. Jackson and Erving Goffman, in particular Goffman’s theories of frame analysis. Alrutz suggests that Applied Theater audiences experience an Investigative Frame, Involvement Frame, Narrative Frame, Presentational Frame, and Responsive Frame. I’ll describe each of these, through audience experiences of Gerbils. During the Investigative Frame of Gerbils, the audience was presented with the themes to be analyzed and discussed—what was being investigated in the play. In the Narrative Frame, the audience was presented with the characters, the story, and the world of the play. This was done through a traditional Presentation Frame, with the audience sitting and the actors performing. The Involvement Frame had audience members come onto the stage and address situations presented. Finally, the Responsiveness Frame happened once the performance ended, and there was a shift into the Legislative Theater process. The Panel reviewed the interventions and developed policies, the audience discussed, voted, and then carried these forward as recommendations to health care providers and government agencies. Although Gerbils utilized all frames, this is not always the case. Which Frames are used depends upon the intention of the production.

Purpose informs audience, and audience informs method. Readers Theater, Forum Theater, Staged Research, Legislative Theater, or Playback Theater all have specific agendas and audiences in mind. The audience informs intention, as much as intention informs audience. It is unlikely that a theater critic will be invited to a Reader’s Theater production when performed at a conference of K-12 educators and those reading the script are teachers from the conference. One wants to create a show that will be aligned with who is watching the performance. Theater for Young Audiences is quite different from kitchen sink realism. Although both may be addressing social issues, how they do it is not the same. As Saldaña (2011) asserted, ethnodrama can have a variety of purposes (at times contradictory) such as pedagogical, social awareness, historical documentation, giving voice, reflexivity, and dialogue within communities; there are also aesthetic and, for some, commercial considerations.

The researchers made a data collection decision to perform Gerbils 3 times. Each performance would be for a different audience. This allowed the researchers to collect specific data regarding the 22 barriers and 15 facilitators to accessing health care, from the three distinct groups. There are significant issues of power and privilege within health care. Indeed, several of these were initially coded as barriers or facilitators. Recognizing the risk of data contamination, processes were developed to minimize these risks. Although separating audiences worked for the research, it is less clear it worked for the audiences.

This separation was a significant concern for the actors, who were used to Forum Theater being heavily focused upon Involvement Frame. The actors thought the opportunity for learning across audiences was significant. What the researchers saw as cross-contamination, the actors saw as cross-pollination. Most (but not all) spect-actor interventions during the community show replaced Neil, the homeless protagonist. For example, one person who replaced Neil during the community show did a 5-min monologue about his own experiences dealing with addiction, homelessness, and mental health care. It was powerful, passionate, and extremely informative. The other two audiences might have benefited tremendously from witnessing his story. However, seeing the physicians negotiate around barriers could have provided actionable insights for community members when dealing with their own health care needs. The awareness and analysis of systemic issues by current health care practitioners was profound.

For the most part, medical students and practitioners replaced medical practitioners in the play. Many of the medical students moved into a place of “magic,” suddenly having much more time than the script, and emergency room (ER) reality, would indicate is possible. The actors believed there would have been value in having that intervention done in front of currently practicing health care providers and community members. Practicing providers could have elaborated on the barriers keeping that wish-filled intervention from actually happening, and community members could have seen the desire to help from medical students. Indeed, both students and practitioners demonstrated very high levels of empathy, listening, and showed a strong desire to communicate effectively. This might have been nice for community members to see, who, during “their” performances often echoed the original data.

It was fascinating to watch the similarities and differences in approaches between the audiences. Beyond this, however, there were also opportunities for insights, compassion, information, and identification. Each group straddled insider and outsider, but the knowledge between all three was profound, and, sadly, missed by those who could have benefited from it the most.

It is impossible to say how things would have been different in the interventions, conversations, and policy recommendations if the audiences had been brought together. It is possible that some people would not have had the opportunity, ability, comfort, or willingness to come on stage in that circumstance. Perhaps the valuable data the researchers collected at the performances would not have been created. Perhaps other data, until now hidden, would have been discovered. As TO actors, we saw missed opportunities; as researchers, they saw clear value. As of yet, there is no definitive answer to which was the “best” decision. As HEART continues to develop their methodology, it might be useful to look at questions around audience protocols.

Friction Four: Spect-actor Protocol

In the first performance, with medical and nursing students, there was a moment when a panel member put up their hand to do an intervention. The researchers had not anticipated the possibility that panel members might want to intervene on stage. The instructions provided to the panelists did not specifically exclude this possibility, and the discussions with the actors and Joker also did not include this scenario. So, when the panel member raised their hand, the Joker looked over to the researchers, and the researchers shook their head. This was seen by the Joker and myself, although I’m not sure if anyone else saw (panel members, audience, or other actors). One of the other actors pointed out to the Joker that the panel member had their hand up. The Joker, up to that point, had not acknowledged the raised hand. It was an awkward moment, the hand was clearly up, yet the Joker was ignoring it. My memory is a little fuzzy, but to my recollection one of the other actors initiated an invitation to the panel member, the Joker acquiesced, and the panel member came onto the stage.

This became a significant issue between the cast and the researchers (although not uncomfortable or confrontational). In Forum Theater, the idea is to garner as many perspectives and ideas as possible. Forum Theater is a rehearsal for living (or a rehearsal for revolution, depending on one’s orientation), and there is much to learn from others’ responses. As previously discussed, there were few opportunities for different audiences to see different lived experiences. The panel member who came onto the stage during the student performance was a local mayor, and had been an emergency department nurse. This perspective was not present elsewhere in the audience, composed otherwise of medical and nursing students.

In later performances, the researchers instituted colored stickers which audience members wore. Different colors signified whether or not a person could shift from spectator to spect-actor. This was made clear to the panel members, the cast, and the audience. In fact, the researchers were told by one audience member (after this protocol had been instituted) that she really wished to take the stage numerous times, but would look at her sticker and recall that she couldn’t. Excellent for the researchers who were preserving the Research Focus, potentially problematic regarding other foci from Friction One.

Friction Five: Unfulfilled Relationships

The intention was for researchers to attend rehearsals. Unfortunately, due to scheduling restrictions, they were only able to Skype into parts of some rehearsals. The lack of physical presence is an apt metaphor for the relationship between the artistic team and the research team. Although the researchers were present (via video), they were not there. For the artistic team, the research too was both present and absent.

The physical separation, and thus lack of relationship, led, I suspect, to missed opportunities to understand the extent, goals, and objectives of the project. After the performances were completed, I asked to speak with the Principal Investigator (Hossain) one-on-one. This conversation was revelatory, and significantly enhanced my understanding of the project, ethnoperformance, and the researchers’ multiple agendas. It’s what led to my thinking on the role of the actor in ethnotheater and this article, an opportunity I am extremely grateful for. I wonder if, had these conversations taken place at the first rehearsal, or even before the first rehearsal, many of the frictions faced might not have occurred.

Friction Six: Aesthetics Versus Ethics

Performance is a medium of aesthetics—theater artists are constantly thinking of and developing ways to tell story. Ways that will be interesting, dynamic, and engaging. Research, of course, also tells a story. The choice to work in arts-based research (ABR) is often inspired by a desire to make the research story more compelling (Foster, 2016) and to foster an emotional connection to the research (Barone & Eisner, 2012), ultimately leading those who interact with the research to see, feel, and know in new ways (O’Connor & Anderson, 2015). One way to raise emotionality is to add conflict. As Bernard Shaw is credited with saying, “no conflict, no drama.” Conflict and tension make for dramatic, comedic, resonant, cathartic, and engaging viewing. Conflict often happens when there are competing wants or intentions.

A hospital emergency waiting room is a space full of wants and intentions. Although ostensibly all desire the same thing, efficient and effective care, each party has their individual agendas. The patient wants to be seen as quickly as possible and have their issue/illness addressed, the triage nurse wants to prioritize who is seen by whom and when, the physicians wants to treat as quick as possible while effectively addressing the issues/illness presented. As the HEART data showed, an emergency waiting room is a place full of conflict. There was a perception, at least by some interviewees, that they did not receive adequate care when going through the emergency department, and that if they had mental health issues and/or were street-involved, they received worse care. There was such a scene developed for Gerbils. In rehearsal, a choice was made by actor and director to have a waiting patient raise their voice in anger to the ER nurse, and have the nurse respond in kind. In the following excerpt, Tom is a homeless man who had been in the waiting room for several hours, and he has been speaking with Neil, who has come to the ER because he is trying to get help for his mental health, which is rapidly deteriorating since he went off his medication due to affordability issues. Tom says the following lines ostensibly to Neil, but they are delivered loudly, so that Helen (the ER nurse), and everyone else in the room, can hear them. Helen then replies in an effort to reassert control.

The cast and director (who was also the playwright) thought the choice to make Tom and Helen angry and loud was supported by the script. The researchers saw the loudness of the character and anger of the nurse as choices that were not realistic. Furthermore, they thought the choices regarding the nurse might alienate the audience of nurses and nursing students. The actors thought Tom’s lines (which were verbatim from the transcripts) called for loudness and the anger.

This scene, and the discussion about aesthetic choices, represents important issues about the experience of medical services and the perception of service providers. The play was developed to portray the perception of service users of the medical system. The researchers made a conscious choice not to include medical practitioners in their interview subjects. Thus, the “voice” was that of a particular group. The above situation leads us directly to the question of ethics (which increasingly I don’t think can be separated from aesthetics). If the ethnotheater production is to remain true to the research conducted, the performances must “bring to life” the perspectives of the interviewees. Furthermore, if one is creating an ethnoperformance (whereby additional data are being collected), there are ethical implications in shifting the aesthetics in anticipation of a particular response. And yet, it does not do any good to alienate the audience of service providers. If part of the purpose is to look at ways of improving health care systems, then having health care providers and service users working together is likely a more effective way of doing this.

Ethics, of course, are essential to all research, medical care, and social services. In ABR, so is aesthetics. With Gerbils, there was no discussion of ethics (that I can recall) during the rehearsal or performance process, and only one passing mention of aesthetics in the original research proposal, which the actors never saw. In discussing this issue during the creation of this article, the Principal Investigator pointed to the following inspiration quoted from Rossiter, Kontos, et al. (2008):

Thus, performativity and theatricality may take a backseat to verisimilitude and realism. (p. 134)

As Mienczakowski, Smith, and Morgan (2002) wrote,

Gone is the primacy of “artistry.” Individual performance is of secondary consequence here—this form of performance is about informants . . . what motivates most of these ethnodrama audiences to debate is the performance’s content and relations to real health experiences, not its style. (p. 34, emphasis added)

As a theater artist, this quote pains me, and I think is based in ignorance of the relevance of aesthetics. However, I am also prepared to accept that I may be the one basing my biases in ignorance.

This friction is labeled Aesthetics Versus Ethics. While I think, it is appropriate for Gerbils, perhaps this sets up a false opposition. Aesthetics and ethics must both be discussed, each in relation to the other, before theater practitioners and researchers embark upon an ethnotheater production. We each need to reach out, understand, and appreciate the perspectives of those we are collaborating with. We might think of this as an effort toward ethico-aesthetic ethnotheater.

Training and Other Recommendations

Based upon these six frictions, the following are recommendations for those embarking upon new ethnotheater productions. We suggest that the answer to many of the above frictions has to do with understanding the nature, agendas, and protocols of the work.

It is naïve to assume that actors can switch from one style of theater to another without training. Boal (2002) wrote, “Forum Theatre demands a different style of acting . . . During the forum proper, actors must be extremely dialectical” (p. 265). For the performer to accept Boal’s claim that “it is necessary to eliminate the private property of the characters by the individual actors” (Boal, 1979, p. 119), actors must shift from what is traditionally taught in theater school. Most theater is not explicitly dialectical, it assumes a “fourth wall,” that the audience is watching into the life of people, who have no idea they are being watched. Audiences accept the conventions that different forms of theater present. How actors perform Shakespeare is different than commedia dell’arte, Noh different than clown, each requires different skills from the actors, and different frames for the audience. Yes, people really do just break out into song when things become emotionally heightened. An actor doing musical theater must have the skills to act, sing, and likely dance. Directors audition people for these skills. Actors train to have these skills. Ethnotheater is no different. In his book Acting in Documentary Theatre, Cantrell (2013) interviewed 27 actors, four writers, and four directors to help understand the processes used by actors to prepare and perform documentary theater. In discussing casting the play Talking to Terrorists, where all but one of the actors had previously worked with the director, Cantrell writes, “This suggests that the production demanded particular techniques and skills . . .” (p. 23).

It is the rare actor who does not do some sort of “research” for their character. We watch, read, rehearse, and test choices. Sometimes we interview people similar to our character, or even enter into a type of ethnographic study by spending time in particular communities to learn more about the world of the play. In Gerbils, the actors were part of a Forum Play and Legislative Theater process, and in doing so, we took on the role of catalyst for dialogue. We brought forth the dialectical. This was done as a way to garner further information (data) for the researchers and to develop policy proposals. I posit that that makes the actors in this project researchers, and further, that all actors who are involved in gathering data from audience members are researchers. It will be easy for most to accept that actors who interview people for the creation of ethnodramas are doing research. I think that this naturally extends to actors who do ethnoperformances, where the purpose of the performance is to gather additional data.

To ensure the most effective ethnotheater or ethnoperformance, there needs to be training for the actor(s). This is not suggested as a way to make it more difficult or onerous to create performance-based ABR, but to increase the likelihood of an ethico-aesthetic performance. This is not the forum to outline a training program for actors working in ethnotheater productions. However, this is the place to articulate some considerations for any ethnotheater productions that are working with actors.

Recommendations

Conclusion

I started this production in ignorance of ethnotheater, and knowledge of acting, a combination which caused frictions. There were difficult and uncomfortable feelings, conversations, and decisions. There were also significant outcomes, both for the research and for the methodology that is being developed. The research team is developing a new replicable research process freely accessible to be used by anyone (for more information on the project and protocol, see http://www.niagaraknowledgeexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/07/HEART-Healthcare-First-2nd-Ed.pdf). I am interested in looking at how to prepare actors to work in ethnotheater and ethnoperformance. There have been many friction-filled stimulating conversations out of this project, and I trust this article will lead to several more. This production has shown me actors need to be prepared for any ethnodrama, ethnotheater, or ethnoperformance production. Saldaña claims, “actors are the soul of ethnodrama.” Let’s ensure we do not become specter-actors.