A UNC Ph.D. candidate is bringing a South American community to the stage on Monday.
Chris Courtheyn, a doctoral candidate in the department of geography at UNC, lived with and studied a peace community in San José de Apartadó, Colombia.
The community's mission was to survive and stay on its land, a difficult task because of the war happening in Colombia at the time.
Courtheyn found that this community had a lot to teach the rest of the world.
“This community is a really amazing case of a way that a group of people has resisted losing their livelihood,” Courtheyn said.
Courtheyn decided that instead of telling the community's stories in the form of a traditional ethnographic study, he would present his findings in the form of a performance.
Courtheyn worked with a team of critical and performance ethnographers to develop a series of performances that reenact excerpts from interviews Courtheyn conducted with the community or experiences that he had with the community.
“It’s a way of trying to present research findings in a way that is ethical and also really effective and creative,” Courtheyn said. “When we perform things, we produce knowledge and understand the world by feeling.”
Bailey Recktenwald, a geography major, said Courtheyn’s performance can be a great way to help people conceptualize geography.
