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Entangled (in the) Sticks

Ethical Conundrums of Popular Theater as Pedagogy and Research

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

This article discusses several ethical dilemmas with which the author struggled in doing and reflecting on her doctoral research. She engaged a group of high school drama students, from a rural, mainly Aboriginal community, in a Popular Theater project. Titled Life in the Sticks, the project was based on students’ initial claim that their issues were determined by their rural environment. Drawing on traditions in participatory research and performance ethnography, performance helped them reexamine aspects of their lived experiences, including those that deem them "at risk." The author's ethical entanglements included difficulties in representing and interpreting the resulting participatory research, problems surrounding the label "at risk," challenges of doing Popular Theater in school, and concerns about the absence of Aboriginal identity/ issues in the students’ performances. The author drew on a feminist ethics of care and performance ethics to make her way through the tangles that emerged.

Key Words: arts-based research • performance ethnography • popular theater • "at-risk" youth • ethics

Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 3, 437-458 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1077800405284364


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