Questions raised over the whole semester

This class raised a lot of questions for me over the course of the semester. One of them is: When the goal of an artist is to provide an audience with insight on a foreign culture, would performing a piece representing the whole culture or an individual from that culture be more accurate? It seems to me that performing an individual might run less risk of being insulting because an artist could gain intimate knowledge of that individual, but then this runs the risk of misinterpreting the culture by presenting a single version of it which could be biased. From this thought, another question is raised: How familiar must an artist become with a culture before they start performing their interpretation of it? I think that an artist doesn't need to be incredibly versed as long as their degree of knowledge v.s. imaginatitive interpretation is made clear to the audience. I think the real danger comes when it is unclear to the audience whether what they're watching is fact or fabrication.
A perfect example is The Couple In The Cage. Some people understood the concept of the performance; some thought it was "real". Either view might lead lead an onlooker to consider similar themes (i.e.-racism, human rights, diversity, industrialization, etc.) and change their way of thinking for the better. However, if someone didn't understand that they were performers, not actual indiginous people displayed by educated anthropologists, it might have the opposite effect of the (presumable) intention of the artists. In example, some of the children that saw The Couple In the Cage might be influenced to view foreign people as sub-human. Theater can be an incredibly powerful tool and I feel it should be wielded with utmost discretion. I feel that it is up to artists to examine thoroughly the implications their performances might have. I think that The Couple In The Cage artists probably considered this, so I would be interested to hear their thoughts on the reaction of children to their performance.