Expressions of personhood in Alzheimer’s: moving from ethnographic text to performing ethnography

Abstract

This article discusses the translation of ethnographic research on embodied selfhood in Alzheimer’s disease into a dramatic production for nurses and ancillary health care professionals working with persons who are cognitively impaired. The appeal of dramatic performance as an alternative medium for the translation and dissemination of research is that it provides an accessible presentation of research to audiences of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, it recovers the experiential immediacy of the body present in the original data-gathering setting, and it can foster critical awareness and engage audiences to envision new possibilities. It is our contention that Expressions of Personhood in Alzheimer’s is an ethnodramatic production that will bring to fruition all of these strengths of the performance paradigm.