Documentary Theatre: A Different Kind of Truth
We as a species are undeniably addicted to stories. We get them everywhere we can: TV, movies, newspapers, websites, social media, and, of course, the theatre. Live theatre can tell a story in a way nothing else can. There’s something completely inimitable about occupying the same space as the performers, knowing that anything could happen. It’s a uniquely human experience, one that we have been participating in since the beginning of our existence.
Aside from telling devised stories, the theatre has also long been a place of truth. The Living Newspaper, which started in the 1930s as part of Roosevelt’s Federal Theatre Project, performed documentary works centered around social issues of the day. In 1939, less than a
decade after its creation, the Federal Theatre Project was disbanded amidst controversy over its political ideology. In the years it existed, though, the FTP established a precedent for political nonfiction theatre that has been enthusiastically embraced by countless playwrights since.
Countless contemporary plays portray some version of the “truth,” whatever that may be. One such play is Chuck Mee’s bobrauschenbergamerica, a theatrical portrait of America based
(very loosely) on the collage art of Robert Rauschenberg. The script is a mixture of appropriated texts and works of Mee’s own creation. It blends reality with fiction so thoroughly that it becomes impossible to tell which is which. One standout scene, titled “The Dark Side,” uses verbatim the words of a television interview with a convicted murderer. The role of the murderer is played by Bob the Pizza Boy, a character whose only appearance is in this scene. As the title suggests, Bob represents the “dark side” of American culture. He speaks frankly about the triple homicide of which he was convicted, and relays that he has already forgiven himself for the deed. He seems to think of himself as a prophet of sorts, making sure to tell us that he committed the murders with a Bible in his pocket. The scene seems to drag on forever as he “um, uh” and stutters his way through the story. The effect is incredibly jarring, but as soon as the scene is over the play resumes its non sequiturial structure, moving into a love scene between two of the main characters. This juxtaposition is characteristic of bobrauschenbergamerica, creating a collage of sorts that when viewed close up seems fragmented and strange but when taken as a
whole paints an alarmingly accurate picture of American life.
One of the most interesting things about Mee’s work is his view of authorship. While much of the text is written by Mee, plenty isn’t. On his website, he goes so far as to assert that “there is no such thing as an original play.” He encourages others to “pillage” his plays as he has done to the work of others, and doesn’t require royalty fees to be paid if the play performed is significantly changed from the original script.
While Mee’s play could arguably be considered nonfiction, there are plenty that stick much more faithfully to real events.
A more traditional example of theatre rooted in truth is The Laramie Project, a documentary play about the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming created in 1998 by Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project. The dialogue consists entirely of
interviews conducted by Moisés Kaufman and Kaufman and his theatre company in Laramie a month after Shepard’s death. Each actor plays numerous parts in the play, changing only minor aspects of their appearance (i.e. adding a hat or a pair of glasses) to indicate characters. This minimalism is common in documentary theatre, as it places the focus on the power of language rather than the spectacle of sets and costumes. This piece of theatre tells Matthew Shepard’s story in a way no other medium can: it relies upon the words of his friends and family, his neighbors, and even his murderers. It focuses on the thoughts and feelings of people who are absolutely integral to the story of the play, but who would likely have been overlooked in media coverage of the event. Despite this, The Laramie Project can’t be considered strictly nonfiction. As in most documentary plays, many of the characters are composites of several interviews, making them less than entirely factual representations. The thing is, this deviation from cold, hard fact doesn’t make the play any less truthful.
One of the most prevalent themes of the play is that Laramie is just like any other town. Hearing the words of its residents drives this idea home in a way no devised script could. They’re real people whose home was host to a heinous, homophobic hate crime. If we want to address the societal problems that led to Matthew Shepard’s death, we cannot treat Laramie like some sort of Sodom. Laramie isn’t an evil town, just like Orlando isn’t an evil city. In order to
understand how these crimes happened we need to listen, and who better to tell us than the people who know the story best? This play is history, a moment in American culture that captivated and horrified the nation.
So why theatre? Couldn’t Matthew’s story be told just as truthfully and effectively with, for instance, a regular old documentary film?
I don’t think it could.
Once a film is done, it’s done. You can watch it a hundred times, and each will be exactly the same as the last. With theatre, and this play in particular, it’s much more personal. Actors constantly step in and out of roles, emphasizing that the words being spoken are far more
important than absolute realism. These characters could be anyone. It feels uniquely human and important, knowing that every word spoken was a genuine reaction to a real event. It’s a story that settles itself deep in your bones, a heartbreakingly honest snapshot of a town that is desperately trying to heal.
You can scroll past a news article online in fractions of a second. Flip the page on a newspaper in practically no time. You can pause a movie, change the channel from a news station, close a book. But you can’t do any of that with live theatre. If you go see The Laramie
Project, you won’t be able to pause it as the police officer who tried to save Matt’s life recounts some of his last moments. You won’t be able to turn the page when Matt’s father wishes his son’s murderer a long life, and you sure as hell won’t be able to change the channel while the Westboro Baptist Church protests Matthew Shepard’s funeral. Instead, you will be forced to stare the truth in the face, and it will stare right back at you through the eyes of characters who
are, in the end, just like you.
Another show in the same vein as The Laramie Project is Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, a documentary play about the Los Angeles riots following the death of Rodney King and the not guilty verdict granted to his murderers. We see these riots now as an important point in American history, a time when, at least for a moment, the whole country was shocked by this instance of completely unpunished police brutality brought upon an innocent man. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 paints a portrait of the riots using only the words of the people who were there, people who can tell us better than anyone exactly what happened in
Los Angeles and why. Twilight, like The Laramie Project, consists entirely of verbatim interviews conducted by Smith. However, unlike The Laramie Project, there are no interjections from Smith
herself; each character speaks a monologue and then is gone. In a furthering of the minimalism of documentary theatre, Smith performs every part in the play, again only changing minor aspects of her appearance to indicate a new role.
Smith writes in a style not unlike that of Charles Mee in bobrauschenbergamerica, inserting line breaks in the monologues wherever a pause should exist. This choice makes the script read almost like poetry, an elegy for Rodney King coming from hundreds of different voices but out of only one mouth. Again, Smith’s solo performance of this piece has an important impact. She’s telling a story of an incredibly deep-seated conflict, a story of racial tension and police brutality, and she certainly isn’t telling only one side of it. Choosing to perform the piece alone beautifully illustrates the humanity and interconnectedness of every interviewee, not giving any one point of view priority over another.
SLUT: The Play, a 2013 play by Katie Cappiello scrutinizing rape culture, is another kind of documentary play entirely. The script was created based on the experiences of the members of the all-girls theatre company The Arts Effect, and while the story portrayed in the play may not have happened exactly how it appears, the truth at its core is undeniable. It’s documentary theatre in the age of social media, and it adapts itself accordingly. Before the play begins, a
livestream of real tweets containing the word “slut” is projected on a large screen, setting the stage for a quasi-fictional story with absolute nonfiction and blurring the lines between the two. Later in the play, this screen is used to project various Instagram posts that advance the story, making SLUT one of the only plays I’ve seen to fully embrace the role social media plays in our lives. To further this point, the creators of SLUT coined the hashtag “#stopslut” to publicize their show, moving into what could be considered meta-mediation.
Although the story told in SLUT is not necessarily as “real” as some documentary theatre, it’s a story that plays out every day in the lives of young women. It’s a brutally honest portrait of the humiliation, disbelief, and mistreatment girls face when they try to talk about rape culture, slut shaming, and sexual assault. It’s a play that says everything we as women have been too afraid or too silenced to say, and in its honesty we can find solace in the fact that we are certainly not alone. All of these plays have something crucial in common: they portray news, culture, and history in a way no other medium can. They are all discussing evergreen issues of American society: violence, homophobia, police brutality, and rape culture. They are part of a human tradition that has existed for millennium and will never die.