The performer as shaman: an auto ethnographic performance as research project

Abstract

This is an auto ethnographic project in which I explore how my personal and cultural narratives can be used for healing and transformation through a theatre making process. I look at performance as an object of making meaning while placing myself at the centre of the study as the subject of this research. During this process, I was looking at discovering a personal theatre making language with an aim of finding my voice. The outcome of my journey was an experimental creative project titled Eenganga which was performed in an alternative and nontraditional form in terms of space, text and the overall theatre making process. This study is an account of a journey that initially began as a performance ethnography project which collected cultural narratives of black urban traditional healers from Katutura, Windhoek, Namibia. There was an internal and an external data collection process. My body as a site of knowledge was the main research instrument.