About This Book: A Note from the Ethnographer

Alone or Oporniki. While the book contains several supplementary elements (a reflective essay, discussion of the method used to create the script, and appendices addressing readers in a variety of disciplines and career stages), the play itself, as George Marcus notes in the foreword, is indeed “the thing,” that is, the centerpoint of the volume and the impetus for its existence. I encourage readers to read the work aloud, perform scenes, and create or attend a live staging of the play. Readers may find it useful to supplement their reading of the text of the play by watching video clips or engaging other sensory media from past live performances, available on the companion website to this book (www.iwasneveralone.org). Appendix 4 offers suggestions for reading this book in a classroom setting. I Was Never Alone is based on ethnographic research in a regional city in Northwest Russia (2010–14). I adapted each of the “portraits” in the script from transcripts of interviews that I conducted, in Russian, with adults with disabilities in the city. The people represented in the script have disabilities related to physical impairments that affect their movement, as the Russian word oporniki in the title indicates. In this sense, this work cannot be considered representative of the About This Book: A Note from the Ethnographer