Miss Translation USA Goes to Cuba: Performance as Research toward a Performative Ethnography

Abstract

For the last few years, I have conducted research in Cuba on a range of performance forms. In order to develop an approach to doing “fieldwork,” I have drawn equally from my practice as a visual and performance artist and my work as a scholar in performance studies and critical theory.¹ Particularly, I have engaged a persona from my performance repertoire — the aging beauty queen, Miss-Translation USA² — in order to develop a method and theory for conducting what I call performative ethnography. This chapter consists of notes and reflections on this work, offering an analysis of a performance as research collaboration with the Cuban performer, Roxy Rojo, at the Festival Nacíonal de Pequeño Formato in Sta. Clara Cuba (2006)³ and the kind of ethnographic practice that I am developing from that work. I conclude by outlining some research outcomes and situating the project in terms of performance ethnography and ethnodrama.⁴