I had an opportunity today to connect with Johnny Saldaña Professor and Associate Director, Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts, School of Theatre and Film, Arizona State University, Tempe. Johnny is the author of the book, "Ethnodrama: An Anthology of Reality Theatre" , and is considered a leader in North America in the research based theatre genre "ethnodrama". We are pleased to inform you about his newest autoethnodrama project, "Second Chair". CM
Johnny Saldaña at Arizona State University (ASU), developed a 30-minute, one-man autoethnodrama titled "Second Chair," which explores the reminiscences by an older adult of his high school band years and his quest to become first chair clarinetist through an epiphanic challenge. The play is a metaphor for the feelings of lesser status experienced by the marginalized individual in a competitive mainstream society.
The play was commissioned for performance at the second annual Narrative Inquiry in Music Education conference in February 2008 at ASU. Since then, Saldaña has performed the piece for a Phoenix valley LGBTQ youth group, and at the September 2008 Seventh Qualitative Research Conference in Health and Social Care at Bournemouth University, UK. He has also been invited to present "Second Chair" as the keynote address for the Arts and Learning Special Interest Group meeting at the April 2009 American Educational Research Association conference in San Diego. The full play script and related commentary will appear in a future issue of the journal "Research Studies in Music Education."
