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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.
List of contents
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
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"Get Real is an extremely timely and valuable collection of essays that highlights the historical trajectories and developing poetics of documentary theatre and performance. It is a must-read text for arts/humanities academics and students, and performance practitioners." (Kerrie Schaefer, Studies in Theatre & Performance, Vol. 30 (3), November, 2010)
'This is a timely book. Following hard on the heels of the 2006 TDR special issue on documentary theatre, and at a time when public and critical interest in documentary theatre has - in the UK at least - never been higher, the editors have produced a collection of essays that sets out (in their words) 'to re-evaluate the historical traditions' of the genre, and 'to examine the remarkable mobilization and proliferation of documentary forms across Western theatre cultures in the past twodecades'. In this the book, with very few reservations, succeeds...The standard of writing is uniformly high.' - Anthony Jackson, New Theatre Quarterly
'Academic interest in documentary theatre has been slowly growing and this anthology, the first book-length study of the subject in a decade, offers an overdue and distinctive contribution to disciplinary knowledge...Get Real is an extremely timely and valuable collection of essays that highlights the historical trajectories and developing poetics of documentary theatre and performance. It is a must-read text for arts/humanities academics and students, and performance practitioners.' - Kerrie Schaefer, Studies in Theatre and Performance
'Get Real explores reality-based theatre in two main directions. The first presents a historic overview of the hybrid nature of Western documentary theatre since the 1930s... The second direction points to insightful analysis of a range of current practices, with a specific interest in British verbatim theatre.' - Katia Arfara, Theatre Research International
'Like the documentary plays it analyses, Get Real presents a multiplicity of voices and a diversity of viewpoints...the selection and organisation of these essays indicate an acute eye.' - Caroline Wake, Performance Paradigm
