Documentary Theatre - Lecture notes 1 PDF

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Summary

Exploring the world of ducumentry theatre with enquireys in to some of the tecniques used in it....

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Documentary Theatre: Lecture aims to address: What is documentary theatre? What is its function? How does it produce it’s play texts? What does the experience of watching documentary theatre offer that fiction doesn’t? At what social/historical junctures does documentary become popular/nessasery? Documentary theatre uses these documents:     

Testimonials from people Newspaper articles Pictures Audio files It is always political in some way

“Documentry dramas are true/real stories characteristically working towards an articulation of publicly known matters which invites an audience to define or re-define its relationship to them.” (Paget, 1990, 29) The colour of Justice,1999- response to the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence- Tribunal theatre My name is Rachel Corrie, 2005- In response to the murder of Rachel Corrie in Gaza The Laramie Project, 1998- In response to the murder of the Gay University student Mathew Shepard in Laramie The Riots, 2011- In response to the London Riots in 2011 Similarities:       

Real stories Relatable stories Controversial issues True accounts Immediate theatrical response to a current political situation Claim to being truthful and honest to the political situation in question Far from being fictional

Differences:     

Characterisation Playwright vs editor Objective is different Structure of the text is different- verbatim theatre Response to a contemporary political situation

Verbatim theatre is a form of documentary theatre in which plays are constructed from the precise words spoken by people interviewed about a particular event or topic. The playwright interviews people that are connected to the topic that the play is focused on and uses their testimony to construct the piece. Verbatim and the actor- audience relationship:

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Direct address to the audience Profoundly human conversation Direct invitation to engage with and endorse the experiences- no fourth wall Audience ‘cast’ as interviewer, in verbatim pieces

Functions of documentary theatre     

To reopen trials in order to critique justice To create additional historical accounts To reconstruct an event To intermingle autobiography with history To critique the operations of both documentary and fiction

For instance The colour of justice “The police officers questioned In the Macpherson inquiry repeatedly insisted that they were not racist- that their attitudes were in no way influenced by the fact that Stephen Lawrence was black. The play’s impact was enormous… People may have heard or read snippets about the circumstances surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence but they were unaware of what it revealed and its implications. Watching the recreation of the inquiry opened people’s eyes to what Billington called the ‘negligence and reflex racism of the British Police.” (Hammond and Steward, 2008, 109) The Laramie project The Laramie project has been produced over 2000 times in different locations around the world. Its impact as an engine for social change is commendable. It helped to raise awareness of the issues of hate crime, particularly those that are directed against the gay people. It is claimed to have significantly impacted on the realisation of the Matthew Shepard Act, otherwise known as the Hate Crime Act in America in 2009. Public occurrence is everyday life   

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theatrical event

First and foremost, the event must be of a significant gravity to the well-being of the nation or a segment of the society that constitutes the audience Second, the event must attract a critical mass of public attention Third, the event must take a recognizable form, wither as ceremony, game, or ritual or else have unfolded in a form of narrative that can be apprehended in terms of protagonists and plot Fourth, the event must have been perceived by the public as the symbolic staging of other, recognizable, features of their national or local lives—to embody a certain kind of analogical critique of their ways of living. (Janelle Reinelt, 2006, 78)

The magic of editing  

Richard Norton- Taylor condensed more than 11000 pages of transcripts into the format of this verbatim The performance last just a couple of hours…

Two Problems:  

Truth vs fiction Claim of being unbiased

Conditions: 

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Staging-“The play seemed rather dull, dramatically speaking, old-fashioned in its dramaturgical techniques: a meticulous recreation of surface realism, it staged a simulation of the Macpherson Inquiry, even to the layout of the hearing room, with its computer monitors on desks flashing images of the official documents. The dialogue was based strictly on the transcripts, and the acting was representational and understated in style and function. Part of the non dramatic quality came from an insistence on reproducing some of the verbatim ticks and details of the original transcript, even though a great deal of editing, shaping, and cutting also accompanied the composition of the script. The producing team clearly did not want to sensationalize or overstate the already melodramatic situation.” (Reinelt, 2006, 79-80) Audience- Theatres were packed full of audience. Level of audience attention to what is, arguably, a ‘dry’ spectacle was commendable. Reinelt says that since the events were in public domain for several months and years before the opening of the play “At least this theatrical public could experience a certain catharsis from the performance…” (2006, 80)

Is making a verbatim play a creative act:   

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Verbatim playwrights often do not make up a story or write a dialogue. “Editing – as in writing verbatim drama - may seem more of a craft than an art…” (NortonTaylor in Hammond and Steward, 2008, 130). However, David Hare, another [documentary] playwright argues that the fact that the people in his play actually exist and the words in his plays were actually spoken by them in no way alters his role as a dramatist. An editor must still craft a drama from it. Another technique – Recorded Delivery...