Performed Ethnography and Communication: Improvisation and Embodied Experience by D. Soyini Madison (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Performed Ethnography and Communication: Improvisation and Embodied Experience by D. Soyini Madison
In her recent publication Performed Ethnography and Communication: Improvisation and Embodied Experience, D. Soyini Madison, a pioneer in the field, crafts a narrative that beautifully intertwines the often-partitioned worlds of communication, performance studies, and critical cultural studies. Through an engagement with experience, example, interview, case study, application, and photograph, Madison provides readers a diverse and multiperspective glimpse into the performance ethnographer’s embodied exploration of the human condition.
The introduction offers an explanation of the practice of performed ethnography and poses the larger questions explored throughout the book: “Why and how do we do performed ethnography? What are the theories and debates about it and what are the methods and techniques to create it?” (xix). The reader is asked to consider how oral history and performed ethnography function within “community.” This idea of community becomes vital to Madison’s conversation with the reader. It is worth noting that the text reads like an academic conversation, in which readers are asked to be present and continually add their own insights to those on the page. Madison seems to assume her readers have a certain level of familiarity with performance ethnography, so this particular book may not serve as the ideal introduction to the topic. That being said, the accessibility and focus on community and the human experience allows even the most junior performance and communication scholars to join in the conversation.
The text is organized into two major parts of four and six chapters, respectively. Part 1 encompasses embodied technique and practice. Madison distinguishes between technique and practice in the first chapter, which includes scintillating interviews with both esteemed academic Ben Spatz and performance ethnographer Reneé Alexander Craft. Chapter 2 introduces improvisation to the process of creation, adding the body to the conversation of practice and technique. The discussion of the body in improv expressly elucidates the importance of paying attention to one’s own body and the bodies of others. Madison’s clear and concise discussion of key terms helps the reader understand the communal nature of improv and one’s ability to discover and de-mechanize the body and “socially embedded techniques” in the process (25).
The third chapter considers devised theatre, suggesting processes, stages, and exercises in the interest of devising performance from ethnographic data through collaborative and improvisational techniques. Madison lays out a clear path for the creator, even providing workshop exercises for interested readers. Her interview with Honey Pot Performance expounds upon the process of this collective and embodied storytelling. Invoking the writings of Augusto Boal and citing his work in image, forum, and newspaper theatre, Madison offers the reader exercises in her fourth chapter aimed at exploring and uncovering the body to create space for discovery. Bringing Boal, Laban, Barteneiff, and Roth into the conversation, Madison weaves an intricate discussion of the ways in which we “perform body,” maintaining that these explorations aid in the approach to considering and sharing ethnographic data.
In the second part of the text, the discussions of improvisation and embodied technique are seamlessly integrated and applied to an exploration of oral history and personal narrative performance. Part 2 begins with chapter 5, arguably the most important chapter in the book, in which Madison brilliantly illuminates the value and the crucial ethical considerations of telling people’s stories. She strategically positions her claims within a politically and historically relevant context. Madison also discusses the plaguing question of ownership: Who owns the story? Is it the interlocutor? Is it the performer? She settles on “both/and/but,” a diplomatic and ethical approach, emphasizing again the collective and collaborative nature of performed ethnography (122). An interview with E. Patrick Johnson helps highlight this approach.
Chapter 6 brings readers into dialogue with the emotional and sensory experience of the narrative event, or [End Page 179] the “how” of telling a story, providing a jarring case study consisting of a digital-live ethnographic performance about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Through this historical example, Madison positions the reader to reflect on...
