Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ethnographic Research on Knowledge Production and Applied Theatre in Post-Apartheid South Africa

博士生Jessica S. Ruthven（圣路易斯华盛顿大学）将在Carolyn Sargent博士的指导下，研究文化特异性应用戏剧项目在艾滋病预防、治疗和护理方面的潜力。在一些国家，戏剧为大众表达抵抗、教育和集体意识建设提供了一个重要的空间。应用戏剧类型已成为表达当地抗击疫情影响斗争的中心场所。虽然对艾滋病毒/艾滋病戏剧的观众接待和参与进行了定量研究，但从定性角度对其新出现的重要性仍未进行充分研究。这项研究将以南非约翰内斯堡为基地，主要关注三个问题：(1)确定应用戏剧作为艾滋病毒/艾滋病卫生交流、宣传和知识生产工具的机制；(2)根据戏剧制作人和观众的定义，确定当代两种主要的HIV/AIDS应用戏剧类型对社区和参与者个人生活的影响；(3)调查社区层面应用戏剧的内容和美学形式如何塑造了南非健康不平等、主观疾病体验和治疗定义的概念。通过参与者观察、深度访谈以及对剧本和现场应用戏剧表演等文化产品的分析，该项目将调查戏剧制作人和观众对戏剧作为一个参与艾滋病毒/艾滋病干预的机构的看法。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于了解受艾滋病毒/艾滋病影响的人参与国家、国际和非政府组织努力产生和传播有关这一流行病的知识的具体文化方式。该项目将提供有关剧场干预如何影响公共卫生话语的数据，这些数据可直接用于未来制定公共卫生战略，使社区参与艾滋病毒干预。此外，该研究将医学人类学和表演研究的理论领域联系起来，为南非保健服务中的当代应用戏剧实践提供综合视角。支持这项研究也有助于社会科学家的教育。

Doctoral student Jessica S. Ruthven (Washington University in St. Louis), with the guidance of Dr. Carolyn Sargent, will investigate the potential for culturally-specific applied theatre programs to contribute to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care efforts. In several countries, theatre has provided an important space for popular expressions of resistance, education, and collective consciousness-building. Applied theatre genres have emerged as central venues in articulating local struggles against the effects of the epidemic. While audience reception and engagement with HIV/AIDS theatre has been studied quantitatively, its emerging importance remains understudied from a qualitative perspective. The research, which will be based in Johannesburg, South Africa, is driven by three primary concerns: (1) to determine the mechanisms by which applied theatre acts as a vehicle for health communication, promotion, and knowledge production about HIV/AIDS; (2) to determine the impact, as defined by both theatre-makers and audience members, of the two main contemporary HIV/AIDS applied theatre genres in the communities and personal lives of those involved; and (3) to investigate how the content and aesthetic forms of community-level applied theatre have shaped conceptualizations of health inequity, subjective illness experience, and definitions about what constitutes healing in South Africa. Through participant-observation, in-depth interviews, and analysis of cultural products such as scripts and live applied theatre performances, the proposed project will investigate theatre-makers' and audience members' ideas about theatre as an institution involved in HIV/AIDS interventions. This research is important because it will contribute to understanding the culturally specific ways in which people affected by HIV/AIDS engage with national, international, and NGO efforts to produce and communicate knowledge about the epidemic. The project will provide data on how theatre interventions shape public health discourse, which may be directly considered in future development of public health strategies for engaging communities in HIV interventions. In addition, the research bridges the theoretical fields of medical anthropology and performance studies to provide an integrated perspective on contemporary applied theatre practices within South African health provision. Supporting this research also contributes to the education of a social scientist.