Chapter 9: Compromising Methodology for Open Audiences

Abstract

Using critical autoethnography, dramatic scenes, and poetry, the author/director/professor grapples with the complexity of creating a service-learning performance troupe for social justice that uses performance ethnographic research methodology to write and perform interactive monologues in Title 1 elementary and middle schools. The director struggles with tensions surrounding: (1) teaching performance ethnographic methodology, narrative interviewing, monologue writing, and oral storytelling; (2) adapting to the needs of community stakeholders; and (3) directing a performance troupe within the restraints of an academic course. The multifaceted goals and challenges of creating a service-learning performance troupe emerge through the professor’s, students’, and teachers’ responses to the project. The author concludes that the compromises to research methodology were necessary to achieve successful learning outcomes and social outreach.