The Play’s The Thing: Using creative methods to place trans and queer knowledge-making centre stage

Humphrey, H. (2024) The Play’s The Thing: Using creative methods to place trans and queer knowledge-making centre stage. In: Cooke, J. and Nyhagen, L. (eds.) Intersectional Feminist Research Methodologies: Applications in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Routledge: London. ISBN 9781032507699 (In Press)

Abstract

This chapter engages with feminist concerns of representing others with an awareness of the shifting political contexts in which work is received. It focuses on the ethics of representation and dissemination using creative intersectional feminist, queer and trans methodologies of ethnodrama and ethnotheatre to share trans and intersex research. The original research project interviewed 36 trans, intersex and LGBTI activists about relationships between trans and intersex activists and activisms. Many participants knew each other and shared delicate stories. An ethnodrama with composite characters was written as an ethical way to anonymise participant identities and protect participants’ ongoing relationships. Each character represents the voices of several real participants with lines drawn verbatim from interviews. This chapter discusses the work of taking the ethnodrama playscript from page to stage as a piece of ethnotheatre, As Is, performed in Glasgow (United Kingdom), in 2022. The play took the context of law reform to discuss social change and activist relationships. The fictionalised ‘ASIS Bill’ is drawn from real laws discussed by participants. The majority of the cast defined the same way as their characters. Trans women played trans women characters; trans men played trans men characters; nonbinary people played nonbinary characters. However, this representation was imperfect, with no intersex actors. This chapter considers the challenges of intersectional methodologies and representative work of the researcher and the cast. It discusses producing this play drawn from research as an example of intersectional feminist, queer and trans methodologies to challenge dominant narratives that are cisnormative, heteronormative and heteropatriarchal.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: In Press
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Humphrey, Dr Harvey
• Authors: Humphrey, H.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Publisher: Routledge
• ISBN: 9781032507699