DOCUMENTING THE CULTURAL EXPERIENCE: AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS STORY TELLING FOR RESEARCH-CREATION PROJECTS IN PERFORMING ARTS

Abstract

Understanding the cultural experience of the community that one studies is one of the foundational objectives of social research. The description of such an experience can take various narrative forms within ethnography. This is the case of autoethnography, narrative for qualitative inquiry, where the researcher, as an active participant, documents and analyzes their own personal experience in response and relation to the studied subject or community. This approach reflects the subjectivity and sensibility of the researcher in their response to their subject and provides a clear account of the politics of engagement. This article frames theoretically and problematizes its use as a writing technique to question the position of researcher in both research-creation projects of performing arts: Todas las santas (2021) and TransMigrARTS (2022). Both were held in person, in the middle of the pandemic, in the Spanish cities of Madrid and Granada, respectively. In this paper, the author explores the embodied and existential tensions that arose in both experiences from his ambivalent position as a researcher-playwright when it comes to creating, prompting and inciting the game, but also when observing and analyzing what happened there.