D.Phil. / This thesis can be regarded as an autoethnographic performance. It consists actually of two plays with ten acts. Most of them have changing scenes Play 1, titled Koringrosie en die kerk, consists of five acts, and tells the story of Koringrosie, the wife of the minister. Her experiences are described against the backdrop of her life in the parsonage. Play 2, Antoinette se doktorale reis with acts six to ten, represents the research story which tells the story behind the stage. True to ethnographic characteristics, these two stories are intermingled, and the reader/playgoer can decide for him- herself which one of the two plays he/she wants to experience first. The first story is an excerpt from the unpublished novel Koringrosie describing my life of twenty one years in a parsonage. With this study I revisit these parts. I started writing Koringrosie during August 1993 with the focus on the one hand to conserve the church culture from 1977-1998. On the other hand it was written to give me a therapeutic space in which I could escape when certain church traditions of an institution like the Church, tended to engulf me.