Thursday 27 March - Saturday 29 March, University of Manchester
This workshop is designed for researchers in the humanities, working with either ethnographic or drama-based methods, and explores the productive potential of merging the two.
Attendance
The workshop will be open to both faculty (including GTAs) and students (UG, PGT, PGR) across the Methods North West partnership and beyond. It is also open to artists and others who are interested in engaging in the method together with researchers. It is possible to attend the full three-day workshop or the 'masterclass' portion only on day 3 (via a separate registration). There are a limited number of travel/accommodation bursaries available to eligible PGRs, please see the bottom of this webpage for details.
Brief details
The workshop explores the cross-pollination between research and narrative practices in theatre and anthropology, offering the opportunity to transform methodological practice in both. By creating a dialogue between these disciplines in a laboratory format, participants can pose questions and engage techniques in ways that enrich our relations with anthropological questions and performative productions.
Affect theatre is an interdisciplinary method developed by Cristiana Giordano and Greg Pierotti. Read more about their collaboration here.
This workshop is supported through funding from Methods North West, The University of Manchester School of Social Science, and the University of Central Lancashire's Institute of Creativity, Communities and Culture.
Workshop Leads
Cristiana Giordano is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her book, Migrants in Translation. Caring and the Logics of Difference in Contemporary Italy (University of California Press, 2014), won the Victor Turner Book Prize for ethnographic writing (2016), and the Boyer Prize in Psychoanalytic Anthropology (2017). Her current research investigates new ways of rendering ethnographic material into artistic forms. She has been collaborating with playwright and director Greg Pierotti on a new methodology at the intersection of the social sciences and performance. They have created Unstories, a 50-minute performance around the current “refugee crisis” in Europe, and Unstories II (roaming), a 45-minute performance which furthers the reflection about movement and borders.
Greg Pierotti is an associate professor of theater at the University of Arizona. He is a playwright, theater director, and actor. He co-authored the plays The Laramie Project, Laramie: 10 Years Later, The People’s Temple, and Unstories I and II. He co-authored the book Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project's Process of Devising Theater. His honors as a writer/director/deviser include a Humanitas Prize, The Will Glickman Award for best new play, and Emmy, Lortel, Drama Desk, and Alpert Award nomintations. Since 2015, Greg and Cristiana Giordano have developed a method for research, writing and theatrical devising called "Affect Theater.” Together they have created performances and authored articles that play at the intersection of Anthropology and Theater. Their new book, Affect Ethnography: Exploring Performance and Narrative in the Creation of Unstories was published in June 2024 by Bloomsbury.
Meghan Rose Donnelly is an anthropologist and theatre director who works with Catholic nuns in Flores, Indonesia on questions of community and self-becoming. Drawing on her experience as a theatre artist, Meghan Rose experiments with playmaking as research methodology, mobilizing the body as epistemological origin to understand who we are, how we’ve become so, and who else has had a hand in our making. Her current project, Tiny Human Dramas, brings anthropologists and artists together to create short plays based on true stories from around the world. She is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester.
Pete Carruthers is a writer, actor, director, producer and early career researcher. His film and theatre work has been used internationally to train health professionals around themes including trauma, neurodiversity and military mental health. His play, ‘The Possibility of Colour’ was created over 15 years with input at every stage of development from health professionals and people with lived experience of the themes explored, which include voice-hearing, neurodiversity, forced treatment and more. Pete is currently working with NHS England and several universities to co-develop a new theatre-and-film-based simulated practice learning package for student nurses. Pete is also a PhD student at UCLan completing a PhD by Portfolio - 'Empathy Machines: Using theatre and film in the training of compassionate and reflective health professionals.'
Workshop Objectives
Participants will:
- Experiment with a new method;
- Collaborate on the co-creation of research analysis for increased interdisciplinary learning;
- Gain new insight into how to analyse empirical material for ethnographic writing;
- Experiment with a new approach to communicating ethnographic material.
The workshop concludes with an 'open masterclass', followed by a live Q&A around the potential of affect theatre as a methodology in ethnography-based social science disciplines and the dramatic arts.
Workshop Structure
This is a three-day workshop, taking place Thursday 27 -Saturday 29 March, with the following timetable:
Roundtable, day 1 (facilitated by Meghan Rose and Pete)
During this roundtable, participants will be invited to share their work and interests, detailing what they hope to get out of the workshop. This will familiarize participants with each other and provide the workshop presenters with a greater sense of the skills and questions in the room. Select participants will be given 5-10 minutes to present. Open discussion will follow.
Affect Theatre Workshop, days 1, 2 & 3 (facilitated by Cristiana and Greg)
Over the course of three days, participants will experiment with the method of affect theatre. Participants are encouraged to include their own empirical data as a part of the source material we utilize in our devising practices. This creates the opportunity for students and faculty to shift their relationship to their research through a collaborative engagement with affective theatrical explorations.
Open Masterclass, day 3
At the end of the workshop, we will hold an 'open masterclass' (13:30 - 15:00) where people from the broader community can observe the process and join in the interpretation. The masterclass will be followed by a final Q&A session (15:00 - 16:00) which will be facilitated by Pete and Meghan Rose.
If you would like to attend this open masterclass only (i.e. not the previous two workshop days), please select the 'Masterclass Only (29th)' ticket option on our eventbrite below.
Recommended Reading
- Favret-Saada, J (1990). About Participation. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry: pp. 189 - 199
- Giordano, C. and Pierotti, G. (2020). Getting Caught: A Collaboration On- and Offstage between Theatre and Anthropology: pp.88–106
Registration
We ask that participants attending the workshop element commit to as much of the three-day workshop as they can. Accommodations can be made for participants who are unable to attend the full workshop due to caring or other responsibilities (please email Meghan Rose to discuss: meghanrose.donnelly@manchester.ac.uk). Given workshop numbers are strictly limited we ask that if you sign up for the full workshop below (without contacting us first) you commit to the full three days.
We are offering a limited number of bursaries towards PhD researchers’ travel and accommodation to attend the workshop. These bursaries are limited to PhD researchers who study at one of the Methods North West institutions and do not have access to alternative funding. To apply for a bursary, please send a short email to methods@manchester.ac.uk saying what you hope to gain from the workshop and how it fits in with your PhD study.
If you have any questions before registering, please get in touch with methods@manchester.ac.uk.
This event has been supported by the Methods North West Collaborative Innovation Grant which provides funds for collaborative project events, initiatives and symposia that support cutting-edge developments in research methods across the North West.