Over the past two decades, theatre practitioners across the West have turned to documentary modes of performance-making to confront new socio-political realities. The essays in this book place this work in context, exploring historical and contemporary examples of documentary and 'verbatim' theatre, and applying a range of critical perspectives.
Contents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; A.Forsyth & C.Megson The Promise of Documentary; J.Reinelt Mediating the 1930s: Documentary and Politics in Theatre Union's Last Edition (1940); B.Harker History in the Driving Seat: Unity Theatre and the Embrace of the 'Real'; C.Chambers The Documentary Body: Theatre Workshop to Banner Theatre; A.Filewod Living Simulations: The Use of Media in Documentary in the UK, Lebanon, and Israel; C.Martin Looking for Esrafil: witnessing 'refugitive' bodies in I've got something to show you ; A.Jeffers Remembering the Past, 'Growing Ourselves a Future': Community-Based Documentary Theatre in the East Palo Alto Project; L.Smith Ngapartji Ngapartji : Telling Aboriginal Australian Stories; M.Casey Performing Trauma: Race Riots and Beyond in the Work of Anna Deavere Smith; A.Forsyth History, Memory and Trauma in the Documentary Plays of Emily Mann; A.Favorini When Heroes Fall: Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife and the Challenge to Truth; N.P.Highberg The Performance of Truth and Justice in Northern Ireland: the Case of Bloody Sunday; C-A.Upton Half the Picture : 'a certain frisson' at the Tricycle Theatre; C.Megson Verbatim Theatre in South Africa: 'living history in a person's performance'; Y.Hutchison The 'Broken Tradition' of Documentary Theatre and its Continued Powers of Endurance; D.Paget Index
