The Youth Drama Club: Globalized Anglophone Teens Amid Czech Homogeneity

Abstract

From May 2020 to June 2021, I did a year-long study at the youth drama club in the capital of the Czech republic, Prague. I used participant observation methods at the rehearsals and performances, and I conducted 10 semistructured, in-person interviews with the youth actors and two with their teachers. the interviews were held during the first part of the research. In October 2020 I was forced to switch to remote participation because of COVID-19 restrictions. the online observation was harder; the conversations were flatter, in part because they were confined to one-on-one interactions rather than group discussions. I prolonged the project because these remote interactions were less productive. Fortunately, I had already established connections with the youth theater. I knew the club and the director, adam, even before my ethnographic research because my daughter went there. I had always wondered what she felt among those children with parents from all over the world. I wondered if the other kids who attended had the same feelings. My daughter is from a mixed Czech/english family, but I was born and have spent most of my life in Prague. I would say that I am “Czech as a log,” as the proverb goes. However, my daughter would never say she is Czech, but neither would she describe herself as english. she might identify herself as european if she had to. the children of migrants from countries such as the united states or the united Kingdom are envied in Czechia. they are seen as having privileges that are specific to them; they have connections to other countries and they travel there frequently. Privilege, according to Peggy McIntosh,1 is an unearned advantage — not received due to individual talent or special effort. Instead, it involves rights or entitlements related to a preferred status or rank, benefiting the recipient and excluding others. Privileged persons might not realize their privilege. Indeed, the anglophone teens in the Czech republic have certain attributes of privilege; one is that english as their mother tongue is a global lingua franca; anglophone migrants speak the language as natives. according to Cecilia serra, in many parts of the world where english is not the first language, knowledge of english is very often linked to professional success as