VERBATIM THEATRE – WHAT I THINK ABOUT IT NOW
(L.O 1.2) (L.O 3.3)
Theatre is about people. It’s about peoples lives, loves and
hates. I remember at the start of the year of the HND Paul saying that theatre
is ultimately about the “human experience”, the experiences of being human. The
highs, the lows, beauty, ugliness, polished and raw human. Verbatim is all
about the Person, their voice, their character, their feelings, attitudes and
ambitions. The story of Rami a thirteen year old boy force to flee his home,
leaving his family behind, to this day not knowing whether or not they are
alive, but today 19 years old lives in hope of a bright future where he will be
the person who makes a difference. This is a real heart from a real person, and
if his story is to grace the stage then in should be done in beauty and truth,
taking nothing away from the seriousness of the reality he was forced to live. Verbatim
offers the tool to carve that work of theatrical art.
“The content
of plays such as My Name is Rachel Corrie, The Colour of Justice or Talking to
Terrorists … might suggest that we turn to verbatim theatre because we feel it
is somehow better suited to the task of dealing with serious subject matter.”
Verbatim is very powerful type of theatre and effective tool
in creating theatre because it calls a spade a spade and begins to dig. Showing
real people in all conditions, telling their stories of how they felt and dealt
with life. True stories have always been shown in the theatre, on film and
television, but verbatim puts the breath of the person in the production.
You’re not just watching a true story, you are being told My Story, Our Story,
and you feel the breath of them as they talk, you hear the cough as they clear
their throat, you see the speckle of spit as they talk. Verbatim more than
being a show is a conversation, where the audience is the one who is being
spoken to. Kind of like they stumbled into a random stranger at a bus stop and
the start to confide there deepest thoughts to them. Verbatim takes this
conversation and puts it on the stage, aiming to retain it’s purity.
What makes verbatim stand out in theatre is that,
“ Above all, the
audience for a verbatim play enter the theatre with understanding that they are
not going to be lied to. They may be unsettled by the unusual way the play is
constructed, but they will be compensated for lack of convention by the
assumption that what they are looking at and listening to is revelatory and
truthful.”
If a theatregoer wanted to be entertained they could go to a
musical, if they wanted to laugh a comedy, or a drama if they wanted to hear a
good story and see intense acting. The verbatim audience buy their tickets with
the expectance of getting truth. As the statement above reads the verbatim
production itself might not be the greatest, the most entertaining but it’s the
content is what they come for. The voices of real people in real situations, or
shall I put it “people like myself in situations like my own.”
“This is my
aim: to use people real words to move us to a new understanding of ourselves”
Empathy comes from recognition
Theatre has many purposes but I believe that with all the
different purpose there is something they all have in common and that is desire
to explore truth. Even if it was a political play and the purpose was to
‘lampoon’, why lampoon? I’d make a production to lampoon the
government or media, not just to make fun of it, but to get peoples attention
to what I thought was really going on with the government and media. “Simple by choosing to put a subject under the theatrical
microscope, the playwright is saying ‘There’s more to this than meets the
eye’.”
‘Theatre of the Oppressed’, ‘Musical Theatre’, all
different genres of theatre with various purposes have in common the desire to
explore what it is to be human, and what is truth.
Previously plays and productions were made and then
elements of truth placed within them. Verbatim begins with truth, and then the
production grows from there.
“In all my
years of acting, I had hardly ever had such keen attention paid to me… you
could have heard a pin drop”
PAUL FEEDBACK AUDIO
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK AUDIO (L.O 3.2)
JAIME INTERVIEW CLIP
This is just a small clip as I decided no longer to use Jaime for my verbatim piece
JAIME CHARACTER IMPROV
Bibliography
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books Ltd. 9.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 17.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 11.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 10.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 34.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 36.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 24.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 39.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 19.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 41.
Robert Holden
(2005). Authentic Success. Great Britain: Hodder
and Stoughton. 109.
Will Hammond, Dan
Steward (2008). Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books. 22.
No comments:
Post a Comment