Posted on No Comments on The use of Verbatim Theatre

The use of Verbatim Theatre

Our show ‘The Truth About Bedtime…’, will consist of verbatim theatre. “Verbatim theatre is a form of documentary theatre which is based on the spoken words of real people” (Drama Online, undated).

Sleep is for everyone and everyone needs sleep in order to survive. Yet, everyone has different experiences of sleep, it is personal. This meant we are able to speak with everyone and anyone and involve their words and their experiences within our performance. Simply using our own words, would mean we could not have reached into a wider range of sleep experiences, as within our company we are all women, all students and all roughly the same age and therefore we would not be representing sleep issues as widely as they are. I have never realised how complicated sleep is, I have a fairly good relationship with sleep, although I never truly understand why I need sleep, so this process has taught myself a lot and made me realise and become more understanding to other peoples issues regarding sleep.

As a performer, I have the responsibility to learn and deliver the verbatim speeches we are collecting. This does require great focus, as in order to be truthful to the people who have helped us, we will need to make sure we understand the meaning of what they are saying. This will help ensure that our delivery will be as truthful as possible, therefore we must also must include the ‘um’ and ‘ah’ from every person, to indicate they thought process, possible nervousness and even regular speaking, which will reflect on severity of the verbatim sections of our production, The Truth About Bedtime… 

L.F

Works Cited.

Drama online (undated) Verbatim theatre. Drama Online. Available from http://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/genres/verbatim-theatre-iid-2551 [accessed 20 April 2018].

Posted on No Comments on Bringing ideas to life

Bringing ideas to life

Getting ideas up on their feet was quite a time-consuming process, I had to accept that things may need to be changed or altered slightly in rehearsals. It was also important to “be prepared to change direction if the moment calls for it” (Graham and Hoggett, 2014, 88), realising that everything I had choreographed may not be achievable with the performance space or physical abilities of the company. Therefore, in rehearsals I had to be quick on my feet to provide the company with alternatives to the choreography, many of these I took upon myself to think of before the rehearsal started, should the need to edit choreography occur. Majority of my creative scenes stemmed from the verbatim dialogue, collected by dramaturg Eloise White. Consequently, it was my responsibility to merge movement and dialogue together. Arts Council England state that they “champion, develop and invest in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives” (2018) and it is my opinion that the decision to use verbatim theatre was an enriching choice. Audiences were made aware that the material we had created came from real words from real people, some of those who were amongst the audience. For the participants to see how they had an impact on our creative work has the potential to be highly rewarding. 

 

John Wright suggests that “the conventional approach when rehearsing a scene is to ask: ‘What’s your objective?’ In other words, what do you want at this moment in the action” (2006, 33). I kept this at the forefront of my mind when I was creating new material, constantly making sure I knew exactly what it was I wanted to say from a particular piece of movement. I wanted my movement to be true to the words of the participants, so this technique of knowing my objectives was extremely helpful to make the movement as accurate as possible, especially when dealing with verbatim language.  

 

L.R. 

 

Works Cited 

Arts Council England (2018) About us. England: Arts Council England. Available from https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/about-us-0 [Accessed 18 April 2018] 

Graham, S. and Hoggett, S. (2014) The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre (Second Edition) New York: Routledge. 

Wright, J. (2006) Why is that so funny? London: Nick Hern Books Limited.