An act of subversion

Abstract

In our experimentation with an innovative ethnographic form, through which we have sought to challenge our readers and audiences using our research-based offerings as the basis for ethnodramatic performance interactions, we may at times have had little understanding of the full range of implications of our creativity. Professional therapists have compulsory sets of guidelines and ethical protocols to which they refer, and may draw upon the wisdom and advice of peers and mentors by thumbing through the pages of their professional bibles. In the developmental and emergent spaces of social science research, which performance ethnography and health promotion - that which we have labeled ethnodrama - occupies, we are writing the guidelines as we go. That is, we are sometimes engaged in the retrospective application of efficacy to our research products: those scripts and performances which constitute the ethnodramatic report. This then, is not a confessional tale, but a recognition of some undesirable outcomes and new responsibilities emanating from performance ethnography