ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the methodological, ethical, and artistic choices an arts-based research team grappled with while creating a performed ethnography from interviews conducted with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) families about their experiences in schools. Drawing upon a variety of reflections written by each of the research team members, the chapter includes a discussion of how the team came to work as a queer(ed) feminist collective, and features an analysis of how the research team layered a set of verbatim monologues, created from the interviews, with visual imagery and music. The team also proposes and discusses the notion “startling empathy,” an effect they hope their performed ethnography Out at School will have on its audiences. While the verbatim monologues share first-person accounts of an individual’s experience, the illustrations work toward challenging the assumptions audiences might have about LGBTQ people and families, even after they hear the words of these stories. The song “Pushing the Envelope” presents the same interview data reinterpreted as a social concern, and asks audiences to imagine a future where LGBTQ families will not need to “push the envelope” in order to feel safer, expected, and included in schools.
