Miss Translation USA Goes to Cuba: Performance as Research and Ethnography

In January 2006, I was the first U.S. artist to participate in the annual small format theatre festival sponsored by the Cuban government at El Mejunje in Sta. Clara Cuba. The set-up for the performance was that Miss-Translation was the only contestant in the 2006 Miss-Representations of the USA Beauty Pageant, held in Cuba. She participated in three categories: the swimsuit competition (her one-piece vintage leopard swimsuit ironizing the extended U.S. cocktail hour of the 1950s); the interview with the pageant judge (performed by a famous Cuban drag queen, Roxy Rojo); and the talent category, in which she read a fairy tale titled, Cinderella and the Workers Union (Cenicienta y las Juntas de Trabajadores). This performance foregrounds the violence of contact and the history of political collision between the U.S. and Cuba, rather than erasing it. It also mediates my position as a white female scholar/artist from the U.S. who is engaged in regular research on contemporary theatre and cultural performance forms in Cuba. This paper analyzes this project as an example of what I call performative ethnography, or performance as research ethnography, and situates it in terms of the focus on autobiography and writing that is common in contemporary ethnographic practice.

Based in part on papers delivered at the following conferences:

Riley, Shannon Rose. "Miss Translation USA Goes to Cuba: The Problems and Possibilities of Cuba-Us Collaboration in Performance." Latin American Studies Association. Montréal, Canada: Latin American Studies Association, 2007.