Beyond Documentary Realism by Cyrielle Garson

Author:Cyrielle Garson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2021-03-22T18:31:24.902000+00:00

4.1

“Physical Verbatim Theatre”: DV8’s To Be Straight with You (2008)

In this chapter, I look at a kind of verbatim theatre that is perhaps most difficult to define due to its eclecticism in contemporary performance. From a historical standpoint, a case might well be made that trying to conjoin verbatim material and dance is something that was very much characteristic of the pre-1990s phase of British verbatim theatre. Documentary theatre-maker Rib Davis asserted in 1986 that “documentary drama [as opposed to what he calls – ironically for us in this context – ”a straight play”] forces you into more imaginative solutions – perhaps mime, or puppetry, or an otherwise utterly non-naturalistic presentation, such as stylised dance across the dialogue” (10). What possibly necessitates further examination, however, is the way in which these “solutions” relate to and depart from the notion of stage realism.

These remarks aside, I intend to demonstrate here that today’s physical verbatim theatre constitutes a significant departure from these earlier practices (that could arguably be framed in terms of new realism) and therefore deserves one’s most serious attention.14 In order to do so, one must turn at once to an important figure in this history that is identified by Lehmann as one of his eighty-four practitioners of the postdramatic (24) since his work with DV8 Physical Theatre is clearly set outside the parameters of the dramatic model and challenges the spectatorial habits of visual reception.

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