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Student Ethnographers in the Rehearsal Room: Witnessing

image of Student Ethnographers in the Rehearsal Room: Witnessing Prinz Bettliegend

Rehearsal Studies, developed at the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies (University of Sydney), trains students in ethnographic methodology to observe, document and analyse rehearsal and other performance preparation practices. This chapter describes this approach, and the ways in which the best student casebooks reveal to us not only a sophisticated understanding of the Rehearsal Studies ethnographic task, but also a sensitive response to the source materials and the artists’ engagement with those materials in the rehearsal process. Drawing on the accounts in the outstanding casebooks created by two undergraduate students, Milly Roberts and Shon Ho, who observed the creation of Prinz Bettliegend, the work of this chapter reflects that of the Prinz Bettliegend project overall, whereby something of the elusive, ephemeral nature of past, live performance is captured and preserved for later audiences.

Keywords: Critical Self-Reflexivity ; Documentation ; Ethnography ; Rehearsal ; Rehearsal Studies ; Thick Description

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Student Ethnographers in the Rehearsal Room: Witnessing Prinz Bettliegend
Intellect , 17 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789388145_2
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