is it that the fact of the “starving man” gives the audience? In basing itself on archival history or personal, often oral, testimony, the docu-verbatim show derives a value from its proximity to “the thing itself.” The actor portraying the firsthand witness, using their words, can declare “I was there” and the audience can declare “I was there to witness the person who experienced this,” seeming to put the primary and secondary witnesses into a new relationship.11 There is a certain frisson attached to this proximity and also a potential visceral thrill for the audience in coming close to suffering, a thrill that is made safe by the environs of the theatre. Though the subject matter may be violence and its consequences, the staging of docu-verbatim is nonviolent and it may be perceived indeed as an alternative for audiences who want a dose of reality but do not desire the confrontation of in-yer-face theatre. There is also a clarity offered by docu-verbatim theatre, based on its proximity to, but difference from, the archive or event. The process of docu-verbatim sifts the “important” facts from the irrelevant or messy, creating a more straightforward narrative and message with which audiences can engage. As Martin has described it, “theatre of the real participates in how we come to know and understand what has happened.”12 It may be that docu-verbatim shows play to the converted, but there is also the possibility that the docu-verbatim show can change minds too. In being presented with different sides of the debate, or being granted access to the verbatim words of the original witness, the audience member may be newly convinced (or reconvinced) of the case that is under presentation. And this highlights a feature of docu-verbatim: that it so often has a case to present, which I would summarize as the case to champion the disenfranchised or otherwise voiceless.
In championing the disenfranchised, docu-verbatim theatre promises to create a platform for the many voices that otherwise have no social capital and thus no access to the theatre, or to the cultural marketplace in general. This promise is appealing to an audience, in the same way that “untold stories” have a novelty and discovery value. The promise is also, of course, appealing to those whose stories are to be dramatized as it offers the potential to amplify their voice in an otherwise loud and crowded marketplace. Unlike the television documentary, there is no screen or commercial break to come between the spectator and the subject (though the screen may, in fact, be a welcome diversion for audiences averse to such a close identification). And, finally, in selecting one story to tell—or personalizing through drawing out, however basically, “characters” from the messiness of all the facts—the docu-verbatim show offers the promise not only of making the archive or experience intelligible, but knowable. In this way, docu-verbatim shows promise audiences that in the process of witnessing the production, they will gain an authority over the subject matter and attain a sense of ownership over an archive or experience that did not, initially, belong to them. This promise is a potentially valuable commodity.
If these are some of the reasons why audiences buy a ticket to hear the facts or to see “the thing itself,” then what happens once they are in the theatre? As I discuss in detail below in relation to specific productions, there are various answers to this question. As mentioned, there is the possibility that audiences can be inspired (or not) by the production to act as witnesses themselves in the marketplace outside the theatre. But there are multiple other dimensions to the relationship between the docu-verbatim stage and the auditorium. The agency of the audience is never an easy question to consider, but it is possible to see how productions themselves hope to construct and affect that agency. Ownership of, or authority on, an experience or event is one way that docu-verbatim can create a sense of agency for an audience. Crucially, however, not all perspectives on that experience or event are valued equally within the docu-verbatim play. Frequently, the docu-verbatim show prioritizes the voice and experience of the victim over the perpetrator. The docu-verbatim play, as a result, configures some onstage witnesses and witnessing texts as more valuable or more factual than others. The symbolic capital of the victim is created through the same strategies of editing, scripting, and performance style that are used in fiction plays. The agency of an audience in deciding whose testimony to value is thus circumscribed by the way that docu-verbatim playwrights and companies act as gatekeepers of memory capital. Overall then, the docu-verbatim show grants the audience a feeling of independent agency and being “in the know” while actually strongly guiding their judgement and limiting their knowledge.
Gatekeepers of Memory
Docu-verbatim theatre is always a mediated form. The material being presented comes from archival or testimonial sources but, in its presentation on stage, it is always a limited version of that material. Though this act of limiting may be framed as a socially useful intervention, it nevertheless mediates the material via an ideological agenda with major implications, for example, for what a particular archive is then taken to mean, and how its memory capital is used to support particular subject positions within the political and cultural memory marketplaces. Various strategies of mediation—from where and how statements are positioned within thematic segments, or by telling the audience some pieces of information before others—have direct impact on the reception of the onstage witnesses. How questions are framed and whether the questions are visible or audible to an audience is also a major factor affecting how the testimony being performed—testimony which is often given in response to a question—is itself mediated by the witness and then received by an audience. These strategies are partly driven by necessity—with docu-verbatim theatre there is usually a very large amount of information that needs to be selected from and structured in order to be relayed in any meaningful way.
And so at every stage of the process, there are decisions made about what is meaningful and what should be conveyed, from the self-scripting of the witness or testifier, to the selection, editing, and scripting of the playwright, to the direction of actors or the witnesses themselves, to the production decisions on lighting, sound, and so on. These decisions affect how witnesses are given performance time, and how they are positioned (sympathetically or unsympathetically), and what testimony is included versus what testimony is left out. Technically, as mentioned above, it may be possible with a purely documentary play, based on an accessible archive, to determine what has been excised, but this is not an easy nor, I would imagine, a frequently performed exercise. And where the play is based on oral testimony, often gathered specifically for this purpose, it is impossible to access and know what has been removed from that archive in order to make the performed version. Recognizing inclusion and exclusion as not merely aspects of process, but highly political issues for the docu-verbatim play, is also to recognize that docu-verbatim playwrights, directors, and companies are not so much mediums of memory but gatekeepers. The effect of this gatekeeping is more than telling an audience that some memories or perspectives are important, it results in giving the audience a potentially partial (or slanted) version of the experience—the opposite of “the facts” that are the audience’s initial motivation to see the show. This is particularly important in the cases where the play stands in for the archive; though Brian Friel could declare that “We don’t go to Macbeth for history” this is not the case for plays that actually market themselves as factual approaches to the past.13
Witnesses to Painful Experience
We might not go to Macbeth for history, but we do go for heightened drama, conflict, and catharsis. So what can the docu-verbatim play offer its consumer? The answer is: access to the voice of the disenfranchised, victimized, traumatized individual. In isolating the voices of the disenfranchised, this platform nominates them as particularly important and gives the audience time to consider their memories apart from the usual social context. While this can increase attention, it’s also possible that this apartness can make it difficult for audiences to then connect what they are prepared to listen to appreciatively in the theatre, with the social world outside, with other issues competing for their attention and sympathies.
These plays are not easy to witness. The memories and histories of vulnerability discussed in this chapter make for uncomfortable watching and listening. Many of the experiences described—child abuse, rape, and murder—are still taboo social facts that are hard to hear and, as a result, are all too often underlistened to. However, as these productions, and their reception, show, audiences can be attentive
