Devising Embodied Ethnographic Encounters With Young Children: Playful Performances of Puberty and Menstruation

ABSTRACT

This article details curricular and research methods that privilege young children's voices, movements, and creative choices within performing arts workshops as they devise their own beliefs and understandings of puberty and menstruation. Participants included girl‐identifying children aged 5–12 years, residing in a central Pennsylvania suburb adjacent to a major university in the United States. Relevant literature from research with young children, performance anthropology, and critical menstrual studies contextualizes the embodied, devised, and collaborative theatre taken up as ethnographic practice. A scene devised during their workshops illustrates the methods used as participants staged their rendition of the Disney/Pixar film Turning Red . Empirical data from their embodied and verbal interactions surrounding their devised and playful work illustrate these methods that forward and advocate for the embodied contributions of young research participants in research and teaching spaces. This study encouraged participants to reconceptualize the body and embodied movement as valued contributions to research and learning while shifting conceptualizations of the menstruating and pubescent body away from cultural and social imperatives of shame and invisibility. In alignment with the call for this special issue, the findings highlight the youngest participants' (ages 5–7 years old) playful contributions to workshop practices, which served as an inspiration and an invitation for all participants to engage in collaborative creation, promoting their engagement with the topics of bodies, puberty, and menstruation.