Alice in Wondertheatre: An Affective Ethnography

In March 2020, Bergamo was hit by the first wave of the pandemic. More than 6000 people have died in the area, where the emergency facilities lived in a stressful situation for months. In January 2022, a group of ER doctors and nurses from the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo (Italy)—the frontline in the crisis—wanted to reflect collectively on their experience with the COVID-19 pandemic. The group set up a one-year-long theatre workshop involving around twenty colleagues from the ER. The workshop was also aimed at preparing a theatre show, “Giorni muti, notti bianche” (Silent days, sleepless nights), presented in the Bergamo’s main theatre. By participating in the theatre workshop, we conducted a collaborative affective ethnography to investigate the dimension of affects in the ER professionals’ work practices during the first wave of the pandemic. This chapter is based on an affective ethnography and it considers the characteristics of this (post)qualitative research method and its potential for organisational scholars.