Getting Inside Culture

Abstract

Ethnography is an embodied practice; it is an intensely sensuous way of knowing. The embodied researcher is the instrument. (Emphasis original, Conquergood, 1991, p. 180)

Drama and theatre are intricately linked to ethnography and the understanding of culture. Raymond Williams (1983) sees drama as a way of getting cultural analysts through to the fundamental conventions that group people together in society. Dorothy Heathcote urges drama teachers to think and work like “archaeologists” or “ethnographers” to look for meanings and implications beneath the surface of dramatic actions (Wagner, 1999, p. 73). Drama and theatre education is embodied practice as ethnography is. The ethnographer and the drama practitioner and researcher must “be there” to grasp both verb and non-verbal means of communications as well as to situate experience and practice within broader analytical frames.