A Thing Held in Full View: The Politics of Performance Ethnography as Performance as a Social Practice

In an ongoing fight to defunct reproductive rights, the Texas State Government’s position on women’s health practices places female bodies in conflict as human/non-human/sub-human entities. Using performance as a method of inquiry, this solo performance piece attempts to grapple with how public policy on reproductive rights undervalues the lives of low-income women, sanctioning political rhetoric as absolute truth, while diminishing low-income women as inconsequential victims looking for material gains. Bordering on sincerity and absurdity, I reimagine a series of Texas State congressional hearings on Planned Parenthood using transcripts, various news articles, interviews, random audience members, paper plate facemasks, headless baby dolls, and a portable karaoke machine. Additionally, my performance lingers between empathy and apathy as I deliberate on my role as “a low-income” and “a single-mother” and the relationship between the two therein.

 

This performance intends to engage with the conference theme by looking at the various ways advocacy and social justice as performance in Arts-Based Research can continue to assist performance ethnographers. I am interested in how differing performance styles in terms of practice and approach can further benefit performance ethnographers when embodying various lived-experiences. While my performance engages with some autoethnography, I am using performance as a method of inquiry to contextualize systemic oppression against women’s health practices and reproductive rights among low-income women.