Theater and ethnographic research of praxis as method for change: reflections on a German-Brazilian cooperation project

Abstract

‘Luz que Anda’ is a Brazilian-German project which aims at promoting civicness in Serra Negra, a village in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. ‘Luz que Anda’ signifies ‘wandering light’. The objective of the initiative is to empower children, adolescents and adults through methods of participatory theater and of community organizing, as well as through ethnographic methods. The project is supported by pedagogy students from German institutions who are interested in learning to work in intercultural contexts through participatory appraoches and methods. Central to the project are methods of ethnography and biographical research, designed to assess the particulars of everyday life in the village as well as villagers’ biographical background. The methods also aim at promoting villagers capacities to assess their situation and to articulate their specific interests. Finally, the methods should further students’ capacities for critical self-reflection on their social and pedagogical agendas. The paradigm of participatory theater and the paradigm of ethnographic, practice-oriented research are based on similar principles, and complement each other in various productive ways.