"Catapulted into the land of the sick:" A Performance Autoethnography

Abstract: Performance autoethnography offers a reflective process that illuminates the researcher’s personal journey and resonates with audiences. With its body-centered focus, this method is ideal for exploring somatic topics such as illness, trauma, sexual violence, aging, and disability. Merging lived experience with performative expression, it allows for rich engagement with themes often difficult to articulate through traditional academic methods.

In spring 2024, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the plasma cells, just as I was preparing to propose my dissertation in Bioethics and Medical Humanities. This diagnosis forced me to pause my academic work to undergo spine surgery and begin treatment. Initially unfamiliar with my disease, I pivoted my dissertation into a performance autoethnography exploring the emotional, physical, and social dimensions of illness, early treatment, and navigating the healthcare system as a health humanities scholar and medical educator. As I underwent treatment, I realized I was experiencing biculturalism—one identity as a scholar and educator, the other as a cancer patient receiving treatment at my workplace. In developing this script, I have examined not only my own bicultural experience but also broader issues of privilege, power, disorientation, and medical misogyny.

This presentation will be followed by a dialogue about both the subject matter and the process of creating the performance.

Keywords: theatre, autoethnography, biculturalism