ABSTRACT
‘Affect Theater’ is a practice that blends theatrical techniques, anthropological fieldwork methods, and affect theory. For both ethnographers and theatre makers working with the ‘real’, this writing and research methodology allows an engagement with empirical material collected in the field (interviews, archival documents, medical and legal reports, etc.), and the elements of the stage (light, sound, props, architecture, costumes, spatial relationship, as well as text) to both construct and deconstruct narrative for the stage or page. How does an ethnographer leave the field of research and remain affected by the worlds they have encountered when they write them? How does a theatrical deviser build performances from empirical research that convey affective experience rather than strictly a documentary-style narrative? In a laboratory format, Affect Theater troubles the truth claims and privileged theoretical positions that often challenge social scientists and other writers working with the empirical. It allows for the rendering of felt experience from the field that is often obscured by the rush to represent compelling narratives.
