DOCUMENTARY THEATRE
SOME OTHER NAMES
verbatim theatre, docudrama, reality-based theatre, reality theatre, theatre of witness, tribunal theatre, nonfiction theatre, ethno-theatre, ethno-drama, investigative theatre, theatre of the real, theatre of fact, theatre of testimony, staged oral history, collective storytelling, natural performance
SOME TRAITS
· Usually neither plot nor character driven, but focused on an event
· Often no protagonist
· Often more than one "playwright"
· Assembled from primary source material such as oral histories, court documents
· Often about public life as opposed to private life
· Performer can be a persona rather than a character
· No suspension of disbelief
· Often relies on multimedia and other epic techniques to stage
"While documentary theatre remains in the realm of handcraft—people assemble to create it, meet to write it, gather to see it—it is a form of theatre in which technology is a primary factor in the transmission of knowledge. Here the technological postmodern meets oral-theatre culture. The most advanced means of replication and simulation are used to capture and reproduce 'what really happened' for presentation in the live space of the theatre." Carol Martin, "Bodies of Evidence." TDR.
SOME INFLUENCES
Erwin Piscator, 1920s-1939 (Berlin), 1940s (USA), 1951-66 (West Berlin)
Living Newspapers (Russian zhivaia gazeta, 1920s, Federal Theatre Project, 1930s; Workers Theatre Movement, 1930s)
Peter Weiss's The Investigation, 1965, and his 1971 Theatre Quarterly article: “The Material and the Models: Notes Towards a Definition of Documentary Theatre.”
Performance Studies, 1970s
The Drama Review, "Theatre and the Social Sciences" issue 1973
| "Especially important in making connections across boundaries of traditional theatre studies, anthropology, and sociology have been the writings of Richard Schechner, coming from a theatre background, the anthropologists Victor Turner and Dwight Conquergood, and the sociologist Erving Goffman." Marvin Carlson, Performance: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, 1996. |
SOME EXAMPLES OF DOCUMENTARY THEATRE
The Execution of Justice (Mann) The Investigation (Weiss)
9 Parts of Desire (Raffo) Talking to Terrorists (Soans)
Vagina Monologues (Ensler) I Am My Own Wife (Wright)
The Exonerated (Blank & Jensen) Chavez Ravine (Culture Clash)
Fires in the Mirror (Smith) My Name is Rachel Corrie (Rickman)
The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Berrigan) The Laramie Project (Kaufman)
8 (Black)
Fallujah: Eyewitness Testimony from Iraq's Besieged City (Holmes)
ETHICS OF DOCUMENTARY THEATRE: CLAIMS TO TRUTH
"Documentary theatre emphasizes certain kinds of memory and buries others. What is outside the archive–glances, gestures, body language, the felt experience of space, and the proximity of bodies–is created by actors and directors according to their own rules of admissibility." Martin, TDR 11
"It is no accident that this kind of theatre has reemerged during a period of international crises of war, religion, government, truth, and information. Governments 'spin' the facts in order to tell stories. Theatre spins them right back in order to tell different stories. Poststructuralist thought has correctly insisted that social reality—including reporting on social reality—is constructed. There is no 'really real' anywhere in the world of representation." Martin, TDR 14
"How else could this story have been told?" Baglia, 132
“Documentary Theatre takes sides. Many of its themes inevitably demand and assume judgment. In such a theatre, objectivity is likely to be merely a concept used by a ruling group to justify its actions. The call for restraint and understanding is seen as coming from those who do not wish to lose their privileges.” Weiss 42
"[W]hen a production bases its significance on the words of real people, perhaps there are ethical boundaries related to the artistic license typically extended to an aesthetic endeavor." Baglia, 135
ETHICS OF ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
"Documentary drama, like The Laramie Project, ultimately provides a rich site for considering how ethics guide the collection, distribution and application of anthropological knowledge." Hopkins, 7
"Potential performers of ethnographic materials should not enter the field with the overriding motive of 'finding some good performance material'." Conquergood, 6
"When one affirms 'from the outset, the radical Difference of the alien object from ourselves, then at once the doors of comprehension begin to swing closed'…. Too great a distance–aesthetic, romantic, political–denies to the other membership in the same moral community as ourselves."
Conquergood, 7
FOR FURTHER STUDY
Baglia, Jay and Elissa Foster. "Performing the 'Really' Real: Cultural Criticism, Representation and Commodification in The Laramie Project. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Spring 2005): 127-145.
Baș, Elif. "Documentary Theatre after 9/11 and the War in Iraq." Diss. Istanbul U, 2012.
Bottoms, Stephen. "Putting the Document into Documentary: An Unwelcome Corrective?" Documentary Theatre Issue, The Drama Review 50 (Fall 2006): 56-68.
Conquergood Dwight "Performing as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography of Performance." Literature in Performance 5 (April 1985): 1-13.
Dawson, Gary Fisher. Documentary Theatre in the United States. Greenwood Press: 1999.
Forsyth, Alison and Chris Megson. Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present. Palgrave: 2009.
Hamera, Judith. "Performance Ethnography," in Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry. Sage, 2013: 205-232.
Hopkins, Boone J. "Embodied Encounters: Ethics, Representation and Reiteration in Ten Years of The Laramie Project." Performing Ethos: An International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance 2 (Jan 2011): 5-20.
Martin, Carol. "Bodies of Evidence." Documentary Theatre Issue. The Drama Review 50 (Fall 2006): 8-15.
Martin, Carol, ed. Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage. Palgrave: 2010.
Weiss, Peter. : “The Material and the Models: Notes Towards a Definition of Documentary Theatre.” Theatre Quarterly 1 (1971): 41-3.
From: Dwight Conquergood, "Performing as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography of Performance."
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