Professional Practice: Design Specifications for the Chicago Butoh Project

• In Event: Problematizing Assessment of and Through Performance: Three Frames of Reference

Abstract

The Chicago Butoh project is organized around a professional model of qualitative and arts-based research practice. The professionals who contribute to the project are paid for their time and they retain the rights to their materials. Their needs for confidentiality or recognition are threaded through out the project. These practices are intended to support the development of ethical performances that evoke an unequal and unjust world filled with conflict and connection, love and anger, hope and fear.

•Original Interview Questions and Research Design Approved by a Focus Group of Chicago Professionals
•Interviews Conducted with High Confidentiality—No interviews at teachers’ workplaces; no one at their schools or district given names of participants.
•Interview Participants Paid for Their Time and Retain the Rights to use their Stories in Their Own Projects
•All Advances and Royalties to the Artists—All grants and other funds generated by the Chicago Butoh project go to The Studio@620. University professionals receive no funds for the project beyond university-based conference and travel support.
•The Director Directs—Director1 given final decision making for casting and hiring and retains final cut to Chicago Butoh: The Studio@620 Performance
o Director 1 intervened in the performance by adding a second actor to play the African American students evoked by the teacher’s narrative. During the show, the audience focuses on this second actor rather than the teacher.
• Artists Control Copywrite and Image Rights

Transparent Methods and Practices

The Chicago Butoh project is the fifth major production in the Inquiry Theatre Series. Many of the practices used to develop the work, along with the works themselves, have been peer reviewed.
• Narrative Interviews: Four 90 minute interview sessions in Chicago with a White first year teacher in the Chicago Public Schools—First question, “Describe a student or group of students for whom you made a difference.” Original instrument and IRB forms online at Author (2014)
• Hand, Verbatim Transcription—see Author (2009, 2021)
• Qualitative Methods: Coding, writing, presenting--Author (2009)
• Inquiry Theatre Methods: Cut to reveal the drama; no added words; every line in the original order voiced—(Author, 2016)
• Initial Planning—2017—University Creative Scholarship Grant Awarded 4/2017
• Four Community Performances
• Peer Reviewed Live Performance at AERA 2018, New York
• Two Filmed Community Performances at the Studio@620, St. Petersburg, October 2018.
o Performance 1 featured two community
responses and a general discussion
o Performance 2 featured a full-cast talk
back.
• Excerpt of the Rough Cut of Chicago Butoh the Studio@620 Performance peer reviewed at AERA 2018@ Division D, Qualitative Research
o Presented with a critical and a creative response and extended audience discussion.
• Excerpt of the Rough Cut of Chicago Butoh the Studio@620 Performance peer reviewed at ECQI 2020
o Presented with two critical responses.

Author

• Charles F. Vanover, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg