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14. Personal Narratives and Social Constructs through Autoethnography in Performance Studies

Wigbertson Julian Isenia(author)

Chapter of: Performance Research Methods: Interdisciplinary Methods for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies(pp. 293–310)

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Title	14. Personal Narratives and Social Constructs through Autoethnography in Performance Studies
Contributor	Wigbertson Julian Isenia(author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0469.14
Landing page	https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0469/chapters/10.11647/obp.0469.14
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Copyright	Wigbertson Julian Isenia
Publisher	Open Book Publishers
Published on	2025-10-24
Long abstract	This chapter combines personal experience and cultural analysis through the method of autoethnography.1 The author, a Black, non-binary, queer researcher, draws on their fieldwork in Curaçao to examine Bos di Nos Pueblo, a 2015 play by Teatro Kadaken. Through a combination of diary entries, observations, interviews, and self-reflection, the chapter explores how issues of sexuality, identity, and belonging are expressed through performance. The author reflects on their own position within the community and recounts moments of closeness and tension, including a public vote on same-sex marriage that highlighted their family’s rejection and the resulting emotional distance this created. The chapter concludes by linking these descriptions of autoethnography to other contexts, such as a project in which undocumented migrants developed a bilingual theatre piece based on their lived experiences. Using these examples, the chapter shows how autoethnography can connect individual stories to broader social and political issues.
Page range	pp. 293–310
Print length	18 pages
Language	English (Original)

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Contributors

Wigbertson Julian Isenia

(author)

Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of Amsterdam

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0461-8284

Wigbertson Julian Isenia (they/them) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Trained in Cultural Analysis and holding a Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam, their interdisciplinary work merges ethnography and archival research to explore Caribbean identities, postcolonial conditions, and queer subjectivities, particularly in Curaçao. Their scholarship interrogates the entanglements of gender, sexuality, and (post)colonialism through cultural texts, archives, and performances. Isenia has published in Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, Feminist Review, Theaterkrant, and Small Axe. They have also contributed chapters to The Routledge Companion to Sexuality and Colonialism, Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe, and forthcoming anthologies with Oxford University Press.

References

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This chapter combines personal experience and cultural analysis through the method of autoethnography.1 The author, a Black, non-binary, queer researcher, draws on their fieldwork in Curaçao to examine Bos di Nos Pueblo, a 2015 play by Teatro Kadaken. Through a combination of diary entries, observations, interviews, and self-reflection, the chapter explores how issues of sexuality, identity, and belonging are expressed through performance. The author reflects on their own position within the community and recounts moments of closeness and tension, including a public vote on same-sex marriage that highlighted their family’s rejection and the resulting emotional distance this created. The chapter concludes by linking these descriptions of autoethnography to other contexts, such as a project in which undocumented migrants developed a bilingual theatre piece based on their lived experiences. Using these examples, the chapter shows how autoethnography can connect individual stories to broader social and political issues.