#documentary theater

[shakespearenews]

“Well, everything goes back to Shakespeare” 

[anexplorationofstyle]

Documentary Theater

This is the style that I did in depth research on for the class. Here is a summary of my findings:

Varied Beginnings:

In Ancient Greece, Phrynicus’ The Capture of Miletus used facts from a recent Persian war and actually was censored for the trauma it caused because it was too real.

In mid-nineteenth c. Germany, Georg Buchner’s Danton’s Death using verbatim text from key figures in French Revolution

And then…

Living Newspapers:

Right after WWI and a Communist revolution in Russia, the USSR Department of Agitation and Propaganda contracted the Blue Blouse theatre troupes to create touring productions including the zhivaya gazeta or living newspaper.

“These sketches, presenting facts and information about the progress of the revolution, were the first documentary dramas.”

Erwin Piscator:

In Germany, later in the 1920s, Erwin Piscator experimented with all the new technology for recording material and sharing it including projections. Using a variety of archival information like reports and meeting minutes, he began to define this work.

“[The] central or exclusive reliance on actual rather than imaginary event, on dialogue, song and/or visual materials (photographs, films, pictorial documents) ‘found’ in the historical record or gathered by the playwright/researcher, and by a disposition to set individual behavior in all articulated political and/or social context.”

His most noted play was In Spite of Everything!: Historical revue of the years 1914-1919 in twenty-four scenes with intermittent films which he wrote with Felix Gasbarra and was the history of the German Communist Party.

Hallie Flanagan:

In the 1930s, all the way over in the United States, there’s a Great Depression. So, FDR makes the New Deal including the Works Progress Administration which is intended to make jobs. Part of this was the Federal Theatre Project, led by Hallie Flanagan. She made a Living Newspaper unit which hired unemployed newspaper workers and theater makers to use the Russian methods of talking about societal issues including agriculture (Triple-A Plowed Under, 1935), and housing (One-Third of a Nation, 1938) using actual data and information.

Unity Theatre:

At the same time, 1930s Britain, the Unity Theatre breaks off from the Workers’ Theatre Movement which was the cultural arm of the Communist Party to have a theater that was a unified front against fascism without being tied to communism. They also employed the living newspaper techniques including a play called Busmen (1938) which utilized actually bus workers and data to retell the London bus strikes.

Peter Weiss:

After WWII, back in Germany, Erwin Piscator resurfaces with Peter Weiss who makes a document entitled “Fourteen Propositions for a Documentary Theater” specifying the constraints and expanses of the form.

Point fourteen says, “The documentary theater affirms that reality, whatever the obscurity in which it masks itself, can be explained in minute detail.”

One of his most famous plays is The Investigation (1965) which is a condensed reenactment of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials using real witness testimony.

Anna Deavere Smith:

A few decades and social movements later, Anna Deavere Smith in the United States circa 1980s focuses on the collection of information via interviews and then performing those interviews on stage to capture the voices and stories of America with a focus into identity, race, gender, and politics. Two of her most famous works are Fires in the Mirror (1992) and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994).

Performance Ethnography:

A sidestep from documentary theater, performance ethnography is a form of research which uses performance as the delivery method for full embodied experience and accessibility to data. It relies upon the understanding that research around people and culture makes most sense when delivered spoken and lived rather than on page.

It differs from documentary theater in that, this is research for research sake which is then translated to be performed whereas documentary theatre uses investigation while meaning from inception to be an artistic, performative venture.

The Work Continues:

There are so many other examples of contemporary documentary theater, especially in the United States. Here are a few to look into if interested: 

Moises Kaufman and Tectonic Theatre Project, Moment Work

The Civilians, investigative theatre

Life Jacket Theatre Company

The Neo-Futurists

Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen

So What Is It?

My current working definition of documentary theater:

Loosely, the use of text, image, video, language, etc not from imagination but from evidential recording of reality. It aims at bringing reality closest to the audience; intimacy in a presentation of truth based in a shared understanding of fact.

[aletdownsquid]

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith for a critical theory course. I remember watching it as a kid, and it’s great to encounter it again. 

[robinsonaden]

The average news consumer in France has a certain kind of image of refugees: downtrodden, often desperate people, sometimes violently clashing with anti-immigration protesters. But many refugees are trying to remake their lives in France, integrating into daily life while trying not to forget their past. And a French director founded a theatre company to help a group of Syrians do just that, while transmitting their stories to a French audience.

[memoriasconsazon]

I Don't Ask for Much,

Homies, I'm just asking for a simple favor. My godsister Gilmarie (an awesome person & fellow Bronx native) submitted her proposal "Falling of the Train Tracks", a documentary theater piece about the stigmas attached to The Bronx vs. its real stories, to a contest where if she wins, she will receive mentoring and funding for her project. 

If you could just read about it, click the link, and vote, the world would be so much more happier with you & a nice Bronx, Brown college graduate would be closer to her dreams.

"The images that are associated with the South Bronx are those of violence and crime, of gangster thugs and pregnant teenagers, of a grimy dirtiness and a damned poverty. The South Bronx carries such intense negative connotations, which can be justified at times, but are constructed completely by others. I find these associations to be extremely detrimental to both the borough and those who inhabit it. The borough itself suffers because outsiders fear exploring its rich geography and culture. Instead the South Bronx continues to exist within its own bubble, working within its own unyielding atmosphere and suffering the never ending cycle of poverty. But worst of all, the people who live there, the youth especially, grow up with the mentality that the Bronx is nothing and they too will be nothing as a result. This way of thinking poisons ambition and dreams, stifling all of the creativity and resources that the South Bronx could possibly offer.

Falling Off the Train Tracks is a documentary theater piece that aims to capture the true voices of the people of the South Bronx, to develop an image created by those who were born and/or lived there. Scene descriptions and staging allow me to induce the imagery and colors of the South Bronx. Falling Off the Train Tracks is essentially a case study on the ideas attached to the borough, the myths created and the memories shared. I am mostly interested in the differences that I expect to find, which I believe will create a rich text, one that will widen the general public’s notions of the South Bronx because it comes from the mouths of its own residents."

[verster-blog]

Documentary Theater: Two in Your House

Although never performed in Belarus itself, this play has been traveling throughout mostly post-communist Europe in order to raise awareness about home imprisonment of Belarusian activists. The play not only addresses a widely overlooked human rights issue, it draws on ethnographic interviews and research in order to use theater as a form of news reporting. 

The play can be seen at Divadlo Archa (Prague) this Sunday and Monday. It will be performed in Russian with English & Czech subtitles. 

Here is some more information.

"Two in Your House" is an international co-production speaking about the events that took place in Belarus. On focus is Vladimir Neklyaev, poet and politic activist, who is mostly known in the world through what happened in Belarus before and after presidential election in 2010 and 2011.  Documental project "Two in your house" is an attempt to bring onto the stage, events that happened in Neklyaev's 4-room apartment where he lived with his wife and 2 KGB agents house arrested 24/7 for months.  What does it mean to be a prisoner in you own home? How does it feel to exist in your own home, your private room that you have built for your closest people, together with two strangers? What does one feel if his space is restricted? How will it change your relationship with your wife if it is all the time carefully watched by two security persons? How does it change a daily routine of the family? What happens to a family, if it has no private space?  Teatr.doc is an independent theatre from Moscow that was initiated by younger generation of playwrights and dramaturges in 2001. Their method of writing is verbatim - a method where writing plays is based on documents and interviews with an intention to create socially important theatre that speaks on actual subjects. Themes, that based on Teatr.doc are inviting and requesting artistic investigation.