by Sholeh Dalai
I am interested in a multidisciplinary work that is in part autobiographical and it is Concerns about social issues and intersectionality. This idea easily could expand to collaborative and collective making in the community and imaginative educational projects. The participatory work could expand to areas of inner-city children, mothers in presents, immigrants, war victims and victims of police violence. The idea of witnessing and imagination is close to the Verbatim Theater or investigative theater, that uses documented materials newsreels and interviews without altering the real event in text and in performance. I compare this to the third cinema that is independent of mainstream and Hollywood and the status co.
Verbatim Theatre gives voice to people who would not normally have a platform.
The testimonies are based people’s opinions to a traumatic event, which has affected a community in some way. Contemporary documentary theatre is defined by its privileging of subjectivity over universality and questioning of the definition of truth when digital and physical realities collide. The Verbatim Theater is based on the spoken words of real people so has potential for higher degree of objectivity and giving voice to voiceless. This is journalistic approach in a sense uses real interviews and direct cods to construct its theater, While the documentary theater instead use sources like newspaper articles and diaries. The communal story telling aspect of verbatim brings more opinions, and it allows a many voices and perspective to be heard. In relation to the third, cinema it is not single voicing the media and doming perspective on day-to-day politics it is from down and community up, not from top down. Verbatim is subverting the popular single perspective which is a cover up of the truth by single voice of dominate power.
Alienation is a term used in verbatim theatre. It is the idea that alienating a particular action like briefing and lecturing audience, would shed light on a certain aspect of the play. Therefor the audience do not forget that the play is not real, though it is a verbatim play, by making sure the audience do not let themselves get too caught up in the character and emotions. Influenced by plays of Bertolt Brecht, Verbatim Theater wants to remind the audience that they were watching a performance. Brecht never wanted the audience to believe that they were emotionally in sync with the characters. This allowed the audience to view the play from a critical, rather than emotional standpoint. Flexible nature of this theater is what helps playwrights to perform their verbatim play as it should be; for they need the stage to embody several kinds of Mass Media. For example, in U.K director Jonathan Holmes, play “The legacy of Fallujah”, Refugee Perspectives and stories, the stage can be a TV show in a scene and in the following scene, we may see a press-briefing scene, and a battlefield in another scene. This variety of shows and staging different places in each scene are what distinguishes verbatim theatre from the other works of art. The multiplicity of scenes and events makes the audience, feel the rapidity of the play progress in a harmonic way. For example, in Act I, there is an interview of Al Jazeera in which, the stage is supposed to be the TV studio while the audience is considered a studio audience. In Act I, scene II, there is a press briefing followed by scene III where they notice some actors are watching these reports in the previous scenes and commenting on them by direct address to the audience in some sort of storytelling. Making Interviews in the play is a way to allow the Narrative mode to be applied and it is used to convey certain plots to the audience. Then we see onscreen scenes being watched by some actors who comment on what is broadcast to the audience. Therefore, from another perspective, using Media devices in the Verbatim Theatre is another way for providing evidence: for it can be considered a sort of intelligences that approve what is said during the play. Such a technique in the order of scenes makes the play much closer to reality or real life. Another technique Holmes uses in Fallujah to make his play more realistic is that sophisticated soundscape in the background during the play, which has a significant role not only providing naturalistic assistance, but also, an active player. Much of what happens in the play is done orally and it is the function of the sound to give the audience a clear sense of what is to be in Fallujah at this time.
The history of Fact-based drama traced back to ancient Greece and tragic poem production of The Capture of Miletus in 492 BC. Contemporary documentary theatre is rooted in theatrical practices developed in Eastern Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. After the Russian Revolution, the USSR’s Department of Agitation and Propaganda employed theatre troupes known as the Blue Blouses (so called because they wore factory workers’ overalls) to stage current events for the largely illiterate population. The Blue Blouses dramatized news items and current events through song, dance, and staging.
Germany
In Germany focus on issues of social conflict, class tensions and power Structures, essentially derived from Brecht and Erwin Piscator’s Epic Theatre, Piscator developed his own ‘Living Newspaper’ in the 1930s. Erwin Piscator’s play, which was acted in Berlin in 1925, was the first stage documentary. To There are three major periods of German documentary theatre:
the emerging genre in the 1920s with Piscator; the documentary drama in the 1960s; and, beginning in the late 1990s, the new forms of alternative and independent theatre that are highly experiential and question the conception and performance of historical discourses. While documentary theatre that roots in Germany and out from the ‘Theatre of Fact’ in Germany, came the English verbatim theatre to occupy a central place on the British stage, and is seen as one of the most insightful forms of political theatre appear in the works of the English playwrights. The 1930s in England left political theater groups like Unity Theater to expose the truths of the common man. Post-war era and the 1970s Germany much of the work of the 1960s into the 1970s was influenced by Brecht’s distancing of the audience, through aesthetic practices, to question dominant ideologies. The work of this era focused more intensely on new or alternative perspectives of historical events by restructuring the documents to raise questions about perceived reality. These documentary plays focused mainly on the aftermath of Nazism and the genocide of the Holocaust in Germany.
The U.S.
The first movement of the rise of the Verbatim Theatre in America was known by the works produced under the sponsorship of the Federal Theater.
In the US, during The Great Depression, and making of the New deal, by Franklyn Roosevelt, creation of Federal Theater projec, “One Third of a Nation” was a Living News Paper in 1938. Written by Arthur Arent from research by the editorial staff of the Federal Theatre Project, it focused on the problem of housing in the growth of slums in New York City. The play was produced in New York and in nine additional cities, where it was adapted to specific community conditions. (It was adapted as a feature film in 1939). Living Newspaper’s content always centered on some current event and issues of the US working class at large for example: spread of syphilis, slum housing conditions, or the search for affordable electrical power. Teams of research workers, many of whom were out-of-work journalists, carried out extensive research to provide the factual base for each Living Newspaper. Editors then organized the information and gave it to the writers, who collectively assembled a Living Newspaper from this collage of facts, statistics, newspaper clippings, and anecdotes.
The second movement of the rise of the verbatim theatre in America appeared during the social disorder of the late 1960s, where public unrest regarding Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and economic injustices. These critical events required a new generation of playwrights and theatre companies, such as The Living Theatre and the Open Theatre, to employ the documentary form to question dominant media narratives as well as overcome the boundaries of expected theatrical form and performance space. At this time, documentary artists built upon the notion of “fact-based” material with the belief that everyday life and individual, personal experiences provided suitable domains and material for documentary performances. Autobiographical solo performances, which are a one-person show featuring a comedian or actor who stands on stage and entertains an audience and multi-media installations are just a few of the innovations from this era.
The third movement of American documentary theatre, or rather, the beginning of the modern American theatre, was built upon the solo performances of Anna Deavere Smith in the late 1980s.This period was characterized by cooperative development of the theatre performance among directors, designers, playwrights, actors and their documentary subjects: living and dead. The dominance of written archival documents has decreased and interview-based materials have become central moving up to the modern documentary theatre. Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities (1992) is a one-person play by Anna Deavere Smith, an African-American playwright, author, actress, and professor. It explores the Crown Heights riot in August 1991 and its aftermath through the viewpoints of African-American and Jewish people, mostly based in New York City, who were connected directly and indirectly to the riot.
One question I have in clamming of ‘authenticity’ in Verbatim Theatre that deals with trau is explained by its capacity to be truthful, but my question is the capacity to respond what is authentic to real stories in the context of actual narrative of trauma, is our not having capacity for comprehension in the moments of wound of trauma which is beyond the language. And makes us speech less even!
Examples of Verbatim Theater:
The Laramie Project (2000) by Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project was about the town of Laramie’s reactions to the abduction and murder of gay student Matthew Shepard,
Safe 2021: is about sextuality, gender identity family, addiction homeless LGBTQ youth using their actual words and poetry. Safe is directed by Alexis Gregory collaborating with Park Theater and Hackney Empire.
Ann Devreare Smith teaches Verbatime theater to children in Brooklyn BAL acting lab.
The Laramie Project, Documentary Theater & Oral History Performance In this post, writer, historian, and activist Holly Werner-Thomas explores “verbatim theater” as a medium for disseminating oral histories, reflecting on her son’s recent high school’s performance of The Laramie Project.
According to Gradian, sometimes theater, like Verbatim can bring a relatively uncontaminated truth to the audience in time of skepticism towards the news. Examples: Anna Deaver Smith made a one women play in early 90s the riots in Crown Heights. Play Fatherland at the Lyric Hammersmith theater in London uses conversation between fathers and sons to discousee issues around nationality, masculinity and the weight of expections.
Poland
Poland’s postwar avant-garde theater
Grotowski, one of the seminal figures of the 60’s avant-garde, expounded his theory of ”poor” and ”rich” theater. The rich theater, he said, ”depends on artistic kleptomania, drawing from other disciplines, constructing hybrid spectacles, conglomerates without backbone or integrity, yet presented as an organic art-work.” Instead, he attempted for reduction of essentials: actors without even scenic or lighting design.
Grotowski and Tadeuz Kantor’s, theater is based and rooted in a critical perspective of Poland’s political history and the trauma of Auschwitz. Grotowski and Kantor, criticized Catholicism in Poland and romantism in literature, instead celebrating the grotesque of mixture of comedy and horror that we could see in Kantor’s play the Dead Class. The laughter is mad man laughter and full of absurdity. It is funny because since it is tragic and boned to survival.
Kantor translates trauma through performance, mystery animated objects, appropriation and historical ghosts. He approaches drama outside of its context.by bringing a duolog between polish romanticism in literature and holocaust. The work of both directors ruptured the polish drama and literature tradition. Making the memory forever and making a fundamental change.
They both collective experience ways to process holocaust trauma. The Dead Class brings the dead and the ghosts from the past. In the classroom, dolls act as the super ego of children.
Grotowski in search of finding how to impact the viewer of historical destruction and death, lacked a desire to be loyal to the script. He said how could we tell the story and how could we act as vicomtes and reenact the bodies? In their view death lost its meaning as a ritual, bodies became numbers in mass and hero lost its meaning when survivors in camp helped the netzines to build the ovens for burning bodies taking out the gold teethes out of dead, getting bodies ready for medical experiments collecting pills of dead and taking to the mass grave doing the book keepings, even though they knew that they would be kill at the end and hoped for miracles surveil.
Grotowski’s attitude toward the text is mime approach. Gordievsky lets the expression of actors reaches the height of passion even hysteria. They both interested in sensation not the mind be on the stage. (It also in 1970s Brecht’s distancing the audience and questioning the dominant ideologies and alternative perspectives on historical events and questioned the perceiving of reality.
Grotowski’ labra toy theater,
Grotowski joined the Laboratory Theatre in 1959, the year it was founded. Grotowski’s permanent company first showed in western Europe in 1966. He became a guest lecturer and influential director in the avant-garde theatre of England, France, and the Scandinavian countries.
In Grotowski’s view taken form Adorno, Auschwitz changed the language in a profound way, it made us speech less!
They described Auschwitz being beyond our comprehension, and nothing could represent it.
Grotowski founder of theater of Dead, in search of finding how to impact the viewer of historical destruction and death, he lacked the desire to be loyal to the script. He said how could we tell the story and how could we act as vicomtes and reenact the bodies? In their view death lost its meaning as a ritual, and not a unique journey, instead it became a machine of exploitation profit for death. In Auschwitz, bodies became numbers in mass and hero lost its meaning when survivors in camp helped the netzines to build the ovens for burning bodies taking out the gold teethes out of dead, getting bodies ready for medical experience, collecting pills of dead and taking to the mass grave doing the book keepings, even though they knew that they will be kill at the end and hoped for miracles surveil…
Grotowski explored the theater space, not to be passive receptacle, and it had to be able to shrink and expand. The plot had to be spontaneous and unpredictable and drama on stage must become rather and take place. It purpose is not making an illusion but activate the passive audience. Grotowski’s Akroplice recreated death and alienation to rebirth for absence.
Kantor also created the theater of poor. Kantor work coming out of painting assemblage and sculpture focused on women’s work, washing woman, Ironing women etc. also focused on the objects on the stage as transforming and change with the performer in the space. like he made a chair in size of a room. He changed the sequence of the story usage of multiple action and used repetition of words…..
Note about the subverting concepts: Emptiness and zero zones this process means dismembering of logical plot structures, building up scenes not by textual reference but by reference to juggling with Chance or junk embarrassingly shameful matters devoid of any meaning and consequence by invalidation Cooling of temperature and expression use of awkward silence and inaction o, the dilution of forms: by mechanism, jamming, showing of pace losing of rhythm repetition, elimination through noise, stupidity Clichés, automatic action, terror by disinformation withholding of information dissection of plot, acting “on the sly ”acting “non acting” These actions are fallowed by specific mental states on the condition. These mental states are isolated, groundless, automats. And as such they can be perceived as the factors influencing artist creation. For example: Apathy, melancholy, exhaustion, neurosis, depression, unresponsiveness, frustration, minimalization, distraction, boredom, impotence, sluggishness, tearfulness, senility, sclerotic or maniacal states, schizophrenia, misery…
Also, life changing emotion: Love, Jealousy, Lust, passion, greed, cunning, cowardice, revenge, murder, suicide, war, heroism, fear, suffering. Showing by minimal action and showing emotion everything thoughtful careful. Reduce meanings to merely phonetic values, juggle with words to bring up their other meaning’s “dissolve” their content, loosen their logical bonds, soul collectors and sadists. Cruel persecutors and brutal and blunt tools, thoughtless automatons who change easily if required, into devout moralists, strict mentors, dump interpreters. In (Circot theater) in Witkacy’s parallel action play of Classroom, different parts of the body try to save themselves. The play reveal outside of the artist mind somewhere between reality and illusion like man with two extra legs man with two heads man and oversize luggage.
Other Notable Examples
Harlem Experimental Theatre
“From their website”
“the Negro Experimental Theatre (also known as the Harlem Experimental Theatre), which in 1931 produced by Regina M. Anderson. Anderson’s one-act play Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, about a lynching that happened while people prayed in church. The next year the theatre produced her one-act play Underground, about the Underground Railroad.
History
Experimental theater after the black arts movement is a loosely-related body of work that offers new ways of experiencing drama, reconsidering history, and interpreting black identity. Indebted to the theatrical, poetic, and performance trends of the black arts movement, especially its political and aesthetic innovations, experimental theater has both worked with and against the anti-assimilationist impulses of the black arts movement to create work that explores how black theater should engage with the world. Whereas the artists of the black arts movement sought to define a doctrine of black art as a collective vision, experimental theater relies on individual artists to articulate their own.
Despite this attention to individual vision, experimental theater embraces many elements of the black arts movement theater, including the “nonobjective,” African-American history, black vernacular, poetry, and interdisciplinary art collaboration. The nonobjective was a strategy for challenging an audience’s passive engagement with the theater by providing an opportunity for them to “live through” the event they had come to see. In Ed Bullins’s play The Theme Is Blackness (1973), the nonobjective was realized as a performance of blackness—which in this case was the absence of light. When seated, the audience was told that the night’s theme was blackness. All lights were turned out for twenty minutes. Lights were then turned up to announce a curtain call for blackness and turned out once more.
Slave Ship (1969) exposed audiences to the sounds and smells of Africans being tortured during their journey across the Atlantic. Instead of focusing on enacting a story, the nonobjective created a visceral experience that would stay with the audience after the performance.
Black arts movement theater also mined African-American history to expose the truth about slavery, segregation, and racial violence inflicted on Afro Americans. Because plays were written to appeal primarily to younger African-American audiences, black vernacular was featured prominently to connote the youth, social intelligence, and political awareness of characters. Poetry also thrived during the black arts movement. Independent presses such as Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press in Detroit and Haki Madhubuti’s Third world press Press in Chicago published new voices to great international acclaim. Strong theatre and poetry communities helped to foster collaboration with artists from other disciplines including music and the visual arts. The Nuyorican Poets Café NYC founded in 1973 by Miguel Algarin, served as an incubator for this kind of work. Eventually works that combined theater, poetry, dance, music, and visual art came to signify the broad aesthetics of experimental theater.
Experimental theater was also influenced by other artistic movements during the 1960s and 1970s, especially “happenings” and feminist performance art. Happenings, also called “the painter’s theater,” emerged in NYC and echoed the impulses in abstract expressionist painting through presentations of public spectacle and action. Unlike traditional theatrical events, happenings did not require there to be a distinction between the actors and audience. Instead, it was the crowd’s response to an array of visual, aural, or textual stimuli that determined the meaning of the event. Happenings encouraged discussions about how art exists in time. Feminist performance art also help to define “live art” through the presentation of action-oriented art. Influenced by the activism of the civil rights and antiwar movements, feminist performance art aimed to challenge entrenched ideas about gender, sexuality, and women’s right.”
WOW Cafe Theater
“From their website”
“The legendary WOW (Women’s One World) is the “oldest collectively-run performance space for women and/or trans artists in the known universe.” Wow has no Artistic Director nor any centralized control over the works that it shows. The cafe Started in October 1980 as an 11-day international women’s theater festival, with 36 shows from eight countries, “performed for hungry New York lesbians.” A year and a half later, the group found a space at 330 East 11th Street, where year-round it featured performances by women and transgender people.”
Wooster group
“From their web site”
“The Wooster Group originated in 1975 with works composed and directed by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte around Gray’s autobiographical impulses. The Performing Garage has been The Wooster Group’s permanent home and performance venue since its beginning and all their work has been developed there. It was bought in the early 1970s when Soho was still an empty warehouse district being reinhabited by artists. The Wooster Group owns and operates it as a shareholder in the Grand Street Artists Co-op, which was originally established as part of the Fluxus art movement in the 1960s. Before the formation of The Wooster Group, The Performance Group, under the direction of Richard Schechner, developed and produced work at the Garage. From 1975-1980 the two groups shared the space. Prior to The Performance Group founding The Performing Garage, 33 Wooster Street was a metal stamping/flatware factory.
The company is constantly evolving, and with its many artistic associates has created and performed over fifty works for theater, dance, film, and media. The company members are at the center of the work. Elizabeth LeCompte has directed all the pieces, and members who have “moved on” periodically return to remount repertory pieces and make new work.
The Group has used both personal and Group autobiography, and existing texts as an organizing principle for their work. “