How an image makes people move: Symbolic reality, civil disobedience and skills training on and off the stage of an Oxford University Theatre Production

Abstract

In this photo-essay based on eight months of fieldwork on and off the stage of an Oxonian theatre production, I examine the mechanisms that lead cast members to simultaneously endorse on- and offstage responsibilities. I focus on ‘movement’, not only in the sense of physical motion but also, on the one hand, as the audience’s mobilization process which students understood was key to commercial and symbolic success; and on the other hand, in the sense of the journeys the students underwent from the time they got acquainted with the symbolic reality of Voltaire plays in 2011, to the positionalities and civil disobedience they demonstrated on social media six years later. This photo-essay engages with key anthropological debates about the commodification of theatre performances, the ethics of entrepreneurial training in a University setting, and the uniqueness of theatre as a topic of ethnographic enquiry.