At Kansas State University non-fiction playwriting has been a topic of study in the graduate playwriting course which I teach each year. As area residents and K-State students are sources of many of the interviews, the plays that come out of the class often reflect issues and concerns of the local Manhattan, Kansas community. In the 2006-2007 academic year, three of these plays were produced to create dialogue about their respective subjects on and off campus. This article explores the process the playwright-directors used and the ethical and artistic issues that arose in pursuit of the process.
The History of Non-Fiction Playwriting
Non-fiction drama, plays based on a true story, is by no means new. The Capture of Miletus, written about the Persian War by Phrynicus in 492 BC, could be said to be the earliest example (Attilio Favorini, 1995). Other examples can be found in European medieval mystery plays, Shakespearean histories, French revolutionary dramas, the improvisational Living Newspaper of Jacob Moreno in 1920 Vienna (Blatner, 2000), and the Living Newspaper plays of the Federal Theatre Project during the Depression. Some of these plays were based on reportage of historical events by the playwrights, some were created by acting companies through improvisation. Non-fiction playwriting, as it has been practiced in the U.S. since the 1970’s, has focused on preserving and reenacting the words of actual people about historical events. This style of non-fiction performance gives voice to unheard groups in our society, encourages empathy, and, when done well, allows a dramatic situation to be presented in its complexity.
Non-fiction plays are created directly from primary sources: interviews with individuals, excerpts from letters and writings, transcripts of court testimony and other written records – even video clips – creating a performed experience that has a directness and feel of truth that reaches out from the actual individual who experienced the event, through the intermediary of the actor, across the stage into the hearts and minds of the audience. The playwright serves primarily, not as the creator, but as collector and editor of the story, in essence holding up a mirror to the subjects to reflect the story rather than invent it.
This new form of non-fiction in the theatre was inspired by four movements. Avant-garde theatre in the 60’s and early 70’s as performed by the Open Theatre, the Living Theatre, the Performance Group, and others opened American theatre artists to experimentation with traditional forms. Their de-constructing of theatre texts and literary works provided a space for exploring new options to structuring plays. The oral history movement, focused on collecting the words of ordinary people – as opposed to that of leaders and policy makers — also gained steam in the 60’s. Stories of Holocaust survivors, suffragettes, war veterans, and others who had lived through historical events were recorded on audiotape and film, and transcribed into books. Simultaneously, storytelling as an art form began a renaissance spearheaded by the creation of the National Storytelling Festival in 1973. The growth in popularity of the documentary film in the 80’s and 90’s generated even more of an interest in the real stories of real people. The non-fiction play emerged in the late 70’s and married the exciting theatrical elements of performance and storytelling with actual testimony from real people.
One of the first contemporary playwrights to bring the testimony of individuals directly onto the stage was Emily Mann. Annulla Allen: Autobiography of a Survivor, a full length monologue, premiered at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 1977. She followed this in 1980 with Still Life, a full length play juxtaposing monologues of a Vietnam vet, his wife, and a female friend, and in 1984 by Execution of Justice, a docudrama based on the 1978 assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. She has since written two others: Greensboro: A Requiem and the adaptation of the Delaney sisters’ joint autobiography Having Our Say, both in 1995.
Mann says about her approach to non-fiction works:
I like having to deal with the facts of the case. I couldn’t make up who the Klan and the Nazis are [in writing Greensboro: A Requiem]. I had to look the real devil in the face and say, ‘Who are you?’ I felt that if I could make this story powerful onstage – and that can be very hard because sometimes real life is not as theatrically exciting as what you can write – if I could distill and juxtapose and theatricalize this story well enough, the impact would in the end be stronger than if I’d made it up. (Mann, 2006).
Anna Deavere Smith entered the world of non-fiction playwriting through what she calls her search for the American character. She portrays all the characters – male and female – in her plays in one woman performances. One of the strengths of her plays is her inclusion of people who have many differing viewpoints on the event being explored, creating a Rashomon-like style which reveals the complexity of the situation. Unlike many writers of fictional social action drama, she firmly positions herself as “looking at the humanness inside the problems or the crises” rather than judging the people she portrays (Deavere Smith, 1997).
Deavere Smith says that to her, “the most important doorway into the soul of a person is her or his words…I am a student of words” (Deavere Smith, 2000). She focuses on staying true to the words, pauses, ums, ahs, and syntax of the people she interviews and performs. “I think it’s about finding that moment when syntax changes, when grammar breaks down…So the idea is that the psychology of people is going to live right inside those moments when their grammar falls apart and like being in a shipwreck, they are on their own to make it all work out” (Smith, 2000, p. 53).
Non-fiction theatre came to wide popularity with the work of Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Company. Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, produced in 1997, used writings by Oscar Wilde, transcripts from his trials, texts from contemporary accounts, and excerpts from biographies to dramatize what was considered in 1895 to be “the trial of the century.”
Searching for a new project to continue addressing gay and lesbian concerns, Kaufman and his company undertook a play about the murder of Mathew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. In November 1998, only four weeks after the murder, nine company members traveled to Laramie to interview community members about their experiences and thoughts about the murder. Over the course of a year and a half the writers returned six times and conducted over 200 interviews. Mathew Shepherd, who was not alive and could not be interviewed, is not included as a character in the play. Instead The Laramie Project is a portrait of the community and how all segments came to terms in their various ways with the crime and the trial of the murderers. In the course of the production, actors become multiple characters – playing Tectonic Theatre Company members as well as the people of Laramie.
Some non-fiction plays inspire social change. In 2000 Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen interviewed people who had been wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death row, only to later be exonerated. The original 20 stories were narrowed down to those of six individuals. Additional research was done on court records and other documents. The Exonerated ran for 600 performances off-Broadway and performed in Chicago for the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. There the audience included Illinois Governor George Ryan, members of the state legislature, and almost 50 exonerated death row inmates. The play was able “to raise questions not just on a political level, but on a human level” (Blank & Jensen, 2005). Several weeks after the performance Governor Ryan commuted the death sentences of all 167 death row inmates to life in prison.
One last example – The Guys – illustrates how non-fiction plays can become a vehicle for community healing. Anne Nelson, a journalism professor at Columbia University, helped a grief-stricken fire captain write eulogies for his men who were killed in the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11. As she listened and empathized, the stories of these men’s lives and deaths became part of her story. She was asked by Jim Simpson, the artistic director of a small theatre located several blocks from the Twin Towers, to re-structure the eulogies and her experience of writing them into a play. The Guys opened twelve weeks after the attack in that small theatre and allowed the community to come together to hear their stories of loss spoken out loud, providing healing and connection.
The Process of Non-Fiction Playwriting
To create a non-fiction play the playwright chooses an event or an issue that offers dramatic possibilities – often there are many sides to the story or a variety of experiences to relate.Potential interviewees are asked to sign a release that explains the project and obtains informed consent for their words to be recorded and used in some form (usually edited) in the resulting dramatic work. Interviewees may be offered anonymity through change of name and identifying details.
Interviews must be done with great respect and openness or the interviewee won’t be candid and forthcoming. Non-fiction playwrights like Emily Mann, Eve Ensler, and Anna Deavere Smith describe their interview process as being about listening: not to hear a particular truth, but to hear the truth as each interviewee experiences it and as they uniquely express it.If interview subjects feel judged or manipulated in any way, they will not feel safe enough to share their stories. Anna Deavere Smith speaks of the necessity of curiosity when approaching interviews (Smith, 1997). She says, “If I go to the interview knowing what the answer is, I’m gonna miss it.” (Smith, 2006).
Susan Geiger, an oral historian, asserts that a researcher must seek to understand, rather than control her subject. She must also keep herself, as interviewer, out of the interview as much as possible so as not to interfere with the storyteller’s testimony.
All too frequently, questions that presume or identify the marginality of an oral historian or the place from which she speaks do not situate the narrator and her world; rather, such questions expose the researcher’s preconceived notion of the narrator’s world and of her own centrality. (Geiger, 2003).
Once interviews are completed, they are transcribed verbatim. Transcription is in many ways similar to the listening process. It is a way of listening again – at a slower, deeper pace. The playwright becomes physically connected with the subject through typing or writing his words. While copying all the grammatical mistakes, incomplete thoughts, tangents, and “ums,” the playwright is tempted to skip over parts or clean it up, but those tangents and incomplete thoughts are the strings that hold the interviewee’s memories together and reveal the struggle of putting the experience into words. Some of that struggle will need to remain so the resulting character does not appear glib to the audience. Often moments of struggle occur when humor or deep emotion break through or when the person achieves a new insight into what happened.
The words create the reality of the human situation and also define the speaker as a unique person and, in the play, as their character. Moreover, playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, authors of The Exonerated, realized that when they kept in natural speech, it positively impacted their actors’ abilities to find the characters in rehearsal.
…the actors started to “channel” the real people whose words they were reading. We purposely didn’t play audio of the interviews or screen the videotapes…The first couple of days we ascribed this phenomenon to chance. But as we saw it happen over and over…we realized it was coming from the words. As we watched the actors organically and unintentionally adapt whole personas just from reading someone’s sentences, we began to understand just how much our psychology is contained in our speech. The rhythms, the words we choose, the order we put them, the places we pause, stammer, change the subject – they reveal everything about us (Blank & Jensen, 2005).
If the writer stays true to the words of the interview, the character does not have to be “created,” he or she will naturally come to life on the pages of the script.
In many ways the non-fiction playwriting process resembles editing more than creative writing. Interviews are “boiled down” to their essence through judicious cutting which leaves the personality, flavor, and rhythm of the speaker. Then each speaker’s words are juxtapositioned with the others to build a dramatic structure that reflects all sides of the issue and follows a dramatic arch building in intensity from beginning to end. This is the point in the process where commitment to balance and the complexity of the conflict becomes important. The playwright of a non-fiction play has the ability to delete lines of dialogue that do not serve her political agenda or to add characters that voice her views. However, if the playwright succumbs to this temptation, the play can degenerate into propaganda and may not ring true.
A non-fiction play can not belong to the playwright alone. The interviewees entrust the playwright with their story, lending their experience in a sense, and the playwright needs to feel deeply obliged to reflect their truth first and foremost in all its diversity. This takes self-discipline, but it ultimately adds richness to the theatrical encounter.
…sometimes that’s easier to do well when the stories aren’t your own: your ego never has a chance to get involved and you’re free to focus on what the stories do and mean.The stories in our play were never ours. It was our job to get out of the way and let them come through. (Blank & Jensen, 2005).
The construction aspect is often like a giant artistic cut and paste session: first finding the themes and how they progress or change and then arranging them in a way that makes emotional sense. Sometimes short scenes can be dramatized from the stories that are told, illustrating the experience through action as well as testimony. At the end of the play answers to the dramatic questions may remain unanswered – often because they cannot finally be resolved – but a space has been created for the audience to feel with the characters and learn from their experiences.
Three Non-fiction Plays Come To Life
The Writing Process
Garretson, a graduate student in drama therapy at Kansas State University, set out to write a play about abortion in America – the human side, not the political side – by letting women who had had abortions tell their stories. As she says,
Forming the questions for Almost was a painstakingly delicate process. I became intensely protective of my interviewees before I ever spoke with them. The subject matter of Almost is not common to talk about; it is something that can go unspoken indefinitely in the lives of many women. Currently, a true conversation about abortion is essentially impossible; America has stopped listening. I wanted these women to realize that I was listening and that I was committed to getting a theatre full of people to listen as well.
When formulating the questions she would ask in her interviews, she did not want the interviewees to worry about being judged. She felt the best way to accomplish this was by finding the least number of questions that would elicit the story – questions that were open-ended and non-judgmental. Since the word “abortion” is a highly loaded term, she rarely used that word in interviews. If she referred to the abortion, she would say, “What do you remember about the day?” or “Tell me about the appointment.” After the interviewee referred to the abortion in the interview, she matched their terminology, leaving the definition of the experience up to the individual. In this way she could serve not just as a listener, but as a reflective container of the emotion of the experience. All of her interviews were conducted by phone, giving the women even more privacy.
Shannon’s release form explained not only the mechanics of her project, but assured that she was seeking only to dramatize the collected stories and would be crafting the play from a position of neutrality. Within her release she also guaranteed interviewees confidentiality and anytime identifying information was given during the interview, she checked with the woman to see how she wanted it presented.
Martha Crouse, another graduate student studying drama therapy, decided to explore the struggle young gay men of her acquaintance had in coming out (or not coming out) to their parents. She developed questions that were neutral, open-ended, and non-judgmental, while at the same time being tough enough to elicit personal information. She scheduled interviews in private, neutral locations and conducted all but one in person. Despite the personal nature of the material, she found that many of the men were eager to tell their stories and in doing so experienced a kind of release.
Jemmie Godwin, also a drama therapy graduate student, approached the coming out issue from the perspectives of parents. Common questions she asked included: When did you realize your child was gay? How do you feel about your child’s orientation? What would you say to a person who rejected their child? She was very surprised at the amount of personal information that was shared with her. Parents talked about their child trying to commit suicide and experiencing hate crimes, rape, and other issues she never expected to surface during an initial interview with a stranger. After each interview, parents would sigh in relief and say, “I have never talked about this,” or “No one has ever asked us about this.”
All three playwrights crafted their interviews into non-fiction plays for Workshop in Playwrighting, the graduate playwriting class. The first draft of each play was read aloud in class and then re-written based on criticism from the professor and class members. All of the playwrights shared their scripts with the individuals they had interviewed, who reported being very pleased with how their words had been used. The following academic year all three playwrights had the opportunity to become directors of their work and learned about some of the issues created when a non-fiction play is brought to life in the community from which it has sprung.
Directing the Plays
Both Martha and Jemmie had interviewed a number of members of the local chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). One of them, Jason Lantz, was the current president, and saw both plays as a way to open a community dialogue on sexual orientation and other LBGTQ issues in a non-threatening way. He and Christopher Renner, another community activist, applied for and received grants from the Caroline Peine Foundation and the Kansas Equity Coalition. A small amount was reserved for production costs, but the majority of grant monies were put toward promotion of both plays, including radio and newspaper ads, posters, mailing over 3,000 palm cards to people in the area, and a letter to the editor campaign of The Manhattan Mercury, the local newspaper.
The First Congregational Church offered free rehearsal space in its basement, the first of many positive community connections made in the course of the productions. Space for performances was rented at the Manhattan Arts Center, the local community theatre, and arranged for at the K-State Student Union’s Little Theatre. Martha’s play about young gay men, If Truth Be Told, was produced twice in both spaces in October 2006 and Jemmie’s play, You Belong to Us, the stories of parent perspectives, performed four times in March 2007 at the community theatre.
Attendees at both plays were asked to fill out a questionnaire in order to gauge attitude change in response to the shows. Information about PFLAG, LBGTQ issues, and where to find help or more resources was made available in the lobby of the theatres. Each performance was followed by a panel discussion with audience members. The panels consisted of the actors, the director-playwright, members of PFLAG, mental health professionals who were LBGTQ allies, and local spokespersons for gay and lesbian rights. Members of the audience were moved by the stories they heard. Questions from individuals who were not gay or allied community members were asked in a respectful manner. Others who were LBGTQ or LBGTQ allies felt safe enough to respond by sharing their own stories, many which were similar to those enacted in the plays. A common opening statement was, “I’ve never told this to anyone before, but…”
In an unusual turn of events, PFLAG president Jason Lantz, who had been interviewed for If Truth Be Told, participated in the discussions and “came out” to the audience as one of the characters. In the panel discussions he proudly sat next to the actor who portrayed him in the play. Jason reported that having been interviewed gave him the courage to tell his parents about his sexual orientation and they had accepted his revelation supportively. He experienced the whole process as empowering and loved watching his story portrayed on stage.
Once interviewees realized that their stories were going to be brought to life on stage in their own community, there were a variety of reactions. A few expressed an interest in being cast as the character that had been based on their interview. Mel Pooler, one of the parent interviewees from You Belong to Us, wanted to play herself and did not want to remain anonymous. She had asked from the beginning that her character retain her real name. A PFLAG officer and activist, she saw this as an opportunity to be an advocate and to bear witness to the pain her son and other young men and women had suffered over the years due to discrimination and ignorance about homosexuality. Her desire was compounded by the fact that she had a terminal illness and wished to make a public statement at the end of her life. Jemmie and I discussed the wisdom of this, particularly considering Mel’s state of health at the time, and decided that as long as careful monitoring was done to keep her emotionally and physically safe, Mel’s wishes should be respected. Unfortunately, Mel ended up in the hospital from an opportunistic infection and had to be replaced two weeks before the performance. However, she was out of the hospital by the performances and healthy enough to participate as a member of the panels after the shows.
One of the young men in If Truth Be Told wanted to play himself, but did not want to reveal his identity to the public or to the other cast members. Martha and I discussed the pros and cons of this. Playing ones self and replaying difficult life situations can feel very overwhelming if the issues being enacted have not been emotionally dealt with and put into perspective. Raw, unprocessed emotions or memories experienced in a rehearsal – which is not structured for the purposes of therapy – can put an actor in a vulnerable state. We decided that this particular actor had the theatre training and the personal maturity and insight to handle playing himself. Martha, as a drama therapy student, knew what to look for in terms of “danger signs” in case of emotional distress and we planned a variety of drama therapy techniques disguised as character development exercises or “de-roling” techniques that she could implement as safety structures during rehearsals. As it turned out, our gut feeling that he would be able to handle the role was correct. However, she did have to be very aware of remembering not to inadvertently reveal his identity during rehearsals or post-performance discussions.
On the other side of the spectrum, one couple who had been interviewed for You Belong to Us decided after the play was written that they wanted to be removed from the play because they felt their story was so specific and well known in the community that their anonymity could not be assured when it was performed. We were distraught at the idea of losing their story from the play because it was probably the most dramatic and touching. The release they had signed had made it clear that there could be a performance in the future and that they were giving permission for their story to be used in that eventuality as well. However, we felt that using their story in a situation in which they feared re-traumatization was not in their best interest or in the best interest of the project. While re-writing the play was not something Jemmie wanted, not respecting the wishes of the interviewees was ethically repugnant to us. However, before starting to re-write Jemmie made one last ditch effort to convince the parents to allow her to retain their story in the script and in doing so discovered the real reason for their discomfort. The parents revealed that they had not asked their son – now grown and living in another state – for permission to tell the story to Jemmie in the first place and felt now that since it was his story, too, they should have asked, especially now that it was going to be put on stage. They also revealed that they had never at any point talked about these past incidents as a family. Jemmie encouraged them to ask their son’s permission and, even if he didn’t agree to their story being part of the play, to at least talk about the issues together. When they did, the son gave his permission and the family decided to have their story remain as part of the play. They reported that in talking about their family history together, they had experienced a real healing. While they were nervous about seeing the production and feared it might re-open old wounds, their sense of healing deepened when they saw the performance.
As it turned out, approaching rehearsals with drama therapy safeguards in place became necessary for reasons besides having actual interviewees portraying themselves. Knowing the characters were not fictional, but were their real-life neighbors created a big burden of responsibility on the actors who wanted to portray their roles as truthfully as possible. One actress said, “I stand in awe of the courage it took to tell these stories. As an actor, it’s been an honor and responsibility to be exposed to this level of intensity of what they’ve been through.”
With the exception of Jason Lantz in If Truth Be Told and Mel Pooler in You Belong to Us, none of the true identities of the characters in either play were revealed to the audiences.However, because the plays were being performed in the community in which they originated, a few of the actors, who were long-time residents, recognized the stories and correctly guessed who they were playing. They felt guilty that they had not understood the pain and struggles of the individuals they portrayed at the time the events had occurred. After speaking with his real-life counterpart (who voluntarily introduced himself privately after opening night), one actor reported that, “he helped me to realize why I didn’t do as much as I could have when I was in the position to affect policy.” The actor also said that before playing the role, “I think I understood the hurt, but I understand it much deeper today” and as a result, “I became very committed to tell this person’s story to the community.”
The fact that they were playing real people with real problems made the emotions and situations expressed in the play much more immediate and accessible to the actors than when they had been cast in fictional plays. For instance, the actors playing the parents found it quite easy to put themselves in their characters’ shoes. While none of the actors (except Mel) had children who were gay, they deeply identified with the parental struggles of their characters and the love they felt for their children. Half of the actors portraying the young men in If Truth Be Told were straight and half were gay. The gay actors had experienced many of the situations in the script first hand, bringing back many personal memories, even though they were not enacting their own story.
One of the actors in You Belong to Us was playing a very open, loving, and affectionate parent – the total opposite of her own cold, rejecting mother. This experience brought up a lot of unresolved grief from her childhood. Two sets of couples in the play were played by actors who were married to each other in real life. This meant real life marital interactions had to be dealt with and kept separate from the characters’ marital relationships.
Instead of allowing current and previous personal struggles to block progress in rehearsals, Jemmie chose to process them. When she sensed actors had reached a level of emotional intensity that was tapping into personal emotions rather than the characters’ emotions, she intervened with creative arts therapy projects to metaphorically process and contain the emotional material that was surfacing. She used a variety of art, poetry, music, journaling, ritual, games, and discussion to create safety valves and de-roling devices. This allowed the actors to express their feelings, understand them, and then refocus on the script.
This need for additional processing and containing techniques in rehearsals was experienced by Shannon Garretson as she directed Almost, the play about abortion. Shannon’s play was produced in the Purple Masque Theatre, the student performing space at K-State, as part of her creative project for her MA in theatre and her graduate certificate in Women’s Studies. It happened that her cast’s personal opinions about abortion ran the gamut from pro-choice to pro-life. Shannon used creative arts therapy techniques like journaling, mandalas, and collage to create a safe space for her actors. She had promised that this play would be produced in a neutral manner – focused on telling the stories of the women involved as they told them. Creating a safe, nonjudgmental space in which the play could be rehearsed was crucial so that actors could feel supported and accepted regardless of where they stood on the issue. This allowed each actor’s and each character’s experience to be valued and respected just as it was, with no pressure for change in any direction.Ultimately all involved were able to explore their feelings about abortion and reported in the end a greater willingness to accept and tolerate the complexity and shades of gray involved in the issue, while validating and valuing the experiences of others.
Past, present, and potential real life experiences needed to be addressed in some way in rehearsals as any woman involved with the production might have had an abortion or might be in a situation in which she might need to consider having one in the future. Even cast members who had not had a personal experience with abortion had the potential for having friends or family members who had struggled with it at some point. At the same time that Shannon realized personal issues might arise during the work, she was also keenly aware that rehearsals were not therapy sessions and the actors had not auditioned for the show in order to work on any personal issues. For this reason, drama therapy techniques were used primarily as containing and de-roling devices and at no time was anyone put in the position of having to reveal a personal experience to the group. Stories were shared voluntarily only when and if cast members chose to do so. The four actresses playing the four main characters were encouraged to explore how they were similar to the character they portrayed, and they were encouraged to explore how they were different. This helped cast members see each other as separate and distinct from their roles despite any personal similarities that might exist.
Stories which the characters told were filled with harrowing experiences of loss, humiliation, anger, and grief. In order to contain these emotions Shannon developed verbal, written, and artistic de-roling rituals to help separate the actors from their characters and from the play itself at the end of each rehearsal. In this way the feelings generated in rehearsal stayed in rehearsal and were not carried home at the end of the evening. Feelings potentially generated by real-life experiences could also be processed and contained through the de-roling exercises, so no one left rehearsals at the end of the evening feeling raw or vulnerable.
Performances of Almost were followed by discussions facilitated by counselors from the university counseling center, giving audience members the opportunity to ask questions and express opinions. Information on campus and community resources was made available in the lobby in case any emotional memories or concerns surfaced for audience members. A common theme of comments was the recognition that the play was about people and not politics, opening a space for thinking about the issues in a new, deeper, and more profoundly human way. Most of the interviewees were unable to see the show, as they had been recruited from a support group website and lived in different parts of the country, but all wrote letters to the cast thanking them for their willingness to tell their stories.
Shannon, Jemmie and Martha agree that their first experience with non-fiction theatre left them with a great respect for its power, an understanding of the tremendous ethical responsibility of artists involved in this type of work to provide safety and containment for interviewees, actors, and audiences alike, and a desire to work in the genre again. They felt their training as drama therapists helped them as playwrights to listen effectively and reflect the stories told to them with respect and sensitivity. They also felt their drama therapy skills came into play as directors, respecting the boundaries between theatre and therapy for their actors. In the process they worked toward achieving a healthy balance that included positive personal experiences for all the participants and a satisfying artistic production that addressed the issues of the community in a way that challenged unfairness while validating lived experiences.
Conclusion
What makes non-fiction theatre unique and powerful?
Non-fiction plays focus on social action topics, challenging audiences to think and take action about the issues depicted. But unlike fictional social action plays, the voice of the participant is literally brought in – a bottom-up approach which fits well with Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed philosophy. Who knows how a problem is constructed better than those who have actually lived it?
Our brains are built to remember what has been woven into a story, combining facts with sensory experiences and emotions, because the brain functions holistically – connecting thinking and feeling (Damasio, 1994). Emotional connections allow us to make decisions. Facts or ideas devoid of those connections don’t stick with us long. Stories told of real events, viewed through the eyes of people who were there, help us make meaning of these events in ways we can’t forget.
Nonfiction plays are part of the oral tradition, going back to our basic need for sharing experience with each other through the spoken word and personal narrative. In theatre, unlike in literature or visual art, this testimony is spoken aloud and embodied by the actors. The lived experiences of real people are brought into the live bodies of the actors on stage and – through the mirror neurons in our brains – into the bodies of the audience. Embodiment then directly leads to perspective-taking, empathy, and connection (Iacoboni, 2008).
Theatre always involves witnessing. The Greek word for theatre – theaomai – means “to view, gaze at, behold.” The audience witnesses the actors presenting the story on the stage. Including actual testimony in a non-fiction play takes that witnessing experience to a deeper, more meaningful level. The audience is not just taking the perspective of a character – an invention of a playwright’s mind – but is taking on the perspective of another living, breathing human being and walking a mile in his or her shoes.
While all non-fiction plays have a point of view; really well-done ones carefully craft a balance of viewpoints, allowing a variety of opinions and experiences to be shared. The writer’s ultimate goal is to begin a dialogue for change during the performance which will be continued by audience members after the play is over. The hope is that this dialogue will continue to respect the complexity of the issue and the human beings involved.
Using actors to portray the real life persons in non-fiction plays creates distance. This liberates the audience to think more critically about the messages in the play. A fictional play can be dismissed as – well – fiction! A lecture or autobiographical play where the witness speaks his or her own truth directly can be intimidating for witness and audience alike. The distance of non-fiction theatre allows witnesses to experience less vulnerability by having the actors represent them. Actors are trained to be expressive, assuring the story is well told.This distance allows the audience more safety in experiencing the play, too. Instead of responding in anger or sympathy to the actual person, the audience can respond to the ideas and emotions that are shared in a more reflective way.
Narrative is essentially the way we live and make meaning of our lives. Nonfiction plays provide audiences with a direct connection to a chapter in one or several persons’ lives, allowing a small part of the greater story of humanity to be told and understood.
We live in narrative and understand the world around us through it. We tell the story of our lives again and again, revising it each time with new insights arrived at from the perspective of our present looking back on our past, evaluating and re-evaluating what happened in terms of all of our experiences to date (McAdams,1993).
Addendum:
Jemmie Godwin and Martha Crouse were awarded the 2007 Human Rights Award from the Flinthills Human Rights Commission and the 2007 National Award for Outstanding Education Program from National PFLAG at their annual convention. DVDs of If Truth Be Told and You Belong to Us are available for $25 from the Flinthills PFLAG website on the Family Ties page at http://fhpflag.org/_wsn/page4.html.
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NOW Transcript, August 11, 2006, retrieved 3/4/2007 from http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/232.html.