Looking at the Self in Society: Professional Perception and Midgroundable Roles in Community Theater

The article looks at role socialization during a six-week community theater project for young adults lead by professional artists in Helsinki (2015–16). Using ethnographic data, the article examines the participants’ experimentation with photography-based and videography-based techniques, which are used to source materials from the participants’ own worlds of experience for the group’s collective creative project. The article suggests that such tasks, along with their instructional discussions, serve to introduce the participants to role-specific forms of “professional perception.” It is also argued that professional perception in the role of Artist functions in a distinctive “midgrounded” mode processing input from ongoing everyday experiences and activities in light of specific professional epistemologies. The process, then, involves significant changes in how the participants relate to their own identities and social environments.