Standing Ovation

A case study in performance ethnography in which focus group transcripts become the basis for a stage presentation about women with breast cancer.

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Is theatrical performance an effective way to communicate the results of social science research to health practitioners and the public? Ross Gray and Christina Sinding describe how their studies about metastatic breast cancer and prostate cancer were transformed into Handle with Care? and No Big Deal?, plays conveying the cancer experience to physicians and community audiences. People with cancer were among the actors, and the words they spoke were taken from individual and group interviews and from the dialogue between cancer survivors, researchers and dramatists that informed the script. The book tells the story of these two productions, outlining the theoretical basis of research as performance art, the process and problems of turning field notes into scripts, the delights and traumas of performance, and the results of research-based theatre experiments on audiences and participants alike. With the book is an 80-minute VHS videotape showing a performance of each drama.