title: Staging breast cancer, rehearsing metastatic disease.
abstract: Social science researchers have fruitfully used a range of conceptualizations of "performance": as a metaphor for social life, a way of vivifying research findings, and a form of scholarly representation. In this article, the researchers consider performance in its hermeneutic sense, as a way of generating meaning. The drama Handle With Care? Living With Metastatic Breast Cancer was created by a research team, a theater troupe, and women with breast cancer. The researchers employ an interpretive phenomenologicalframework to explore interviews with women with breast cancer involved in creating Handle With Care? The performative context in which the drama developed allowed certain illness meanings to emerge, intensify, and shift. The article also considers ethical dilemmas surfaced by this project.
authors.affiliation: Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation Community Research Initiative.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sinding
authors.forename: Ross
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.forename: Margaret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fitch
authors.forename: Marlene
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Greenberg
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology / Q000523:psychology*; D003142:Communication; D004324:Drama; D004995:Ethics, Professional; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D009864:Ontario; D012650:Self Disclosure