Documents: Reading into living interpretations

During the participant observation of rehearsals and recordings, the scripts emerged as valuable documents to be included in the data. The original research design considered the participant observation and interviews as the only two data collection techniques, however, there were questions about their usefulness for discovering the main features of the fictional characters acted on stage. As mentioned in the subsections on participant observation above, the writing process of a script proved too elusive for a systematic approach, so gaining access to the final product was regarded as a way of overcoming this difficulty. It was also mentioned that scripts were used to take field notes. In those cases, data consisted of comments I had written on the document. This subsection refers to the use of the scripts themselves as a source of data. It was the dramatic content of the script that was regarded as a relevant sample of the interpretive process conducted by the scriptwriters. At a glance, the scripts appeared to include plenty of annotations, references, catchphrases, descriptions and other elements that helped to observe how the characters crafted by the cast were meant to come alive on stage. Scripts also provided an account of fictional characters’ changes in relation to real-life politics.

Analysing documents can enrich an ethnographic approach. Bell (2014, p.107) defines a document as “a general term for an impression left on a physical object by a human being”. Documents can be found in different forms, including images, films, videos or other non-written sources, although the most common are printed or manuscript sources. For Bowen (2009, p.27), a qualitative document analysis requires an examination and interpretation aimed at eliciting

meaning, gaining understanding, and developing empirical knowledge. This is the approach informing my interest in such documents, rather than counting mentions or measuring appearances or any other quantitative data. To make the most of a qualitative document analysis, Bowen suggests their use as a form of triangulation together with other sources of evidence, that is, “to seek convergence and corroboration through the use of different data sources and methods” (p.28). Polònia’s scripts were not produced for this research, as would, for example, a list of staff members requested from the production company. Rather, scripts are “inadvertent sources”, that is to say, they “were used for some purpose other than that for which they were originally intended” (Bell, 2014, p.109). This characteristic might have hindered their interpretation and analysis. However, as Bowen (2009, p.31) points out, these kinds of documents are “‘unobtrusive’ and ‘non-reactive’. That is, they are unaffected by the research process”. This is an advantage when compared to interviews and participant observation, and thus ended up increasing its potential as a triangulation method.

Translation was a particular challenge posed by the inclusion of scripts as documents for this research. Any kind of qualitative research involving translation is problematic because it aims to capture the meaning of the studied social actions and “meaning can be lost in the translation” (Van Nes et al., 2010, p.313). Both interviews and field notes were translated from Castilian- Spanish to English, and it is recognised that in the process, some relevant features could be lost. However, the number of interviews conducted and the constant repetition of the rehearsals and recordings provided instances for constant double-checking and resolving confusion. With the scripts, the task was more problematic. Here, the challenge was to translate the content while keeping its humorous content so that any English reader could understand the joke. To do so, I gave a sample of translated scripts to one British student of Catalan and a Catalan person studying English, both at the University of Leeds. I gave some scripts to a retired British professor from Manchester living in Barcelona. They all made corrections to the material and enriched the translation, but they did not meet the expected standards and – in a confidentiality-related issue – I could not keep sending this material to more people. Finally, the most useful technique was inserting the translated lines as captions in the videos of Polònia’s sketches (see Figure 7). The convergence of the written lines with the whole sequence of actions expressed the humorous content in a better way, although recognising that any translation implies some loss of meaning (Roth, 2013).

Figure 7: Screenshot taken from the captioned video of the sketch El Curs de Prepact.

The political situation of Catalonia and Spain informed the selection of the scripts to be included. During the first field trip to Barcelona, I conducted participant observation of four episodes (381 to 384), which included 22 scripts to be recorded. This number was not enough to observe the main features of the characters as some of them appeared too often or had no appearance because they had no timeliness. The span was enlarged to include the 13 episodes (373 to 386) aired from 24th _{September 2015, the last one before the Catalan local election, until 16}th _January

2016, just after the Catalan separatist parties agreed the coalition government. This period also covered the campaign for the Spanish general election held on 20th _{December 2015 and its}

results. Although the 71 scripts from those 13 episodes were brought into analysis, only a group of 13 produced insightful inputs for this research:

ANALYSED SCRIPTS

Type Description Title Episode

Transicio

Scripts in which the characters appear walking around the film studio as Polònia’s employees.

Romeva sparring 373

El combat pel cinturó roig 373

Mas sobreviuré 375

A Junqueras se li escapa el riure 375

Felip Puig indignat 377

Baños Arrimadas 380

El cobrador del mas 381

Junqueras desapareix 381

Mas-Fernàndez 383

Fictions

Scripts taking scenes or characters from movies, advertising, or songs, to describe political conflicts.

Chicago - Ciutadans 374

El trofeu de la CUP 386

La família unionista 373

For full translation of scripts see Appendices 7 to 19.

This section presented the methodological approach taken for the data collection process. First of all, the approach was defined as an ethnographic one. It is proposed that, in order to observe the occurrence of the re-fusing flow, it is necessary to become part of it as much as possible. An ethnographic approach aims for immersion in participants’ natural settings and capturing the meaning they attribute to their own social actions. Ethnography allows for that ‘sensibility’ that gives weight to participants’ own perspective and knowledge about the studied situation. This immersion was materialised in participating in the production as an extra, that is to say being ready to appear in a scene with a non-speaking role if requested by production staff. The data collection process was designed with three techniques: participant observation, interviews and document analysis, conducted through two different field trips, in November-December 2015 and November-December 2016. In all, 150 hours of participant observation of rehearsals and recordings and 29 interviews were conducted, while 25 scripts were analysed. In all instances, the materials’ different forms of ‘interpretation’ of the politicians’ performances were considered. The next section shows how the collected data was analysed.