What is documentary Theatre in drama?
Documentary theatre is theatre that uses pre-existing documentary material (such as newspapers, government reports, interviews, journals, and correspondences) as source material for stories about real events and people, frequently without altering the text in performance.
What is the purpose of documentary Theatre?
Documentary performances often emerge in response to social or political crises; documentary playwrights offer their audiences a theatrical presentation of real events to inspire critical questions about history, memory and justice as well as provoke social action to change the world outside the theater walls.
Who is the practitioner of Verbatim Theatre?
‘Verbatim Theatre’ has been the term utilized by Derek Paget during his extensive researches into that form of documentary drama which employs (largely or exclusively) tape-recorded material from the ‘real-life’ originals of the characters and events to which it gives dramatic shape.
What is the difference between documentary Theatre and verbatim Theatre?
Strictly, verbatim theatre-makers use real people’s words exclusively, and take this testimony from recorded interviews. Documentary theatre by contrast encompasses other found sources such as newspaper articles and diaries.
What do you mean by documentary?
A documentary is a film or video examining an event or person based on facts. The word can also refer to anything involving documents. The idea of documentary as meaning “pertaining to documents” came about at the beginning of the 19th century. Later, it came to mean a factual record of something.
What is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged?
A man walks across an empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
Who started verbatim?
Anna Deavere Smith is credited with pioneering the form, from her one woman plays in the early 90s about the riots in Crown Heights and Los Angeles.
What makes a successful documentary?
A good doc, in my opinion, must have the following: a subject anchored in a local story that is universal; a story arc comprising a seductive opening, a taut rising action, an unexpected but mind altering climax, a hopeful but not maudlin denouement; unforgettable characters who reveal everything and are “real”; a …
What was the purpose of the documentary theatre?
Depression-Era America. Documentary theatre spread west during the 1930s. In England, the form was employed by left-leaning political theatre groups like the Unity Theatre, which presented both documentary and historical dramas in order to expose the truths of the common man, frequently combining fiction and reality to achieve truth.
What does it mean to be a theatre practitioner?
A theatre practitioner is a person or theatre company that creates practical work or theories to do with performance and theatre. The list of theatre practitioners is constantly changing and evolving, as people are always creating new work and coming up with new thoughts and methodologies for theatre and performance.
How does a playwright create a documentary play?
The playwright interviews people who are connected to the topic that is the play’s focus and then uses their testimony to construct the play. In this way, the playwright seeks to present a multi-voiced approach to events. Such plays may be focused on politics, disasters, sporting and other social events.
How did documentary theatre spread to the west?
Documentary theatre spread west during the 1930s. In England, the form was employed by left-leaning political theatre groups like the Unity Theatre, which presented both documentary and historical dramas in order to expose the truths of the common man, frequently combining fiction and reality to achieve truth.