The experience of immediacy: Emotion and enlistment in fact-based theatre

Abstract

This article discusses emotion as a strategy of political agency in post-Thatcherite documentary theatre. The 1990s saw a renaissance in theatre writing based in 'directness' and 'immediacy' but based in two quite different forms of drama, 'In-Yer-Face' theatre and fact-based drama. There are clear distinctions between these forms: the new brutalist writing was aggressively provocative; documentary theatre engaged the audience by revealing an urgent 'truth'. Both claimed a kind of realism that confronted actuality, be that of situation or experience, through forms of theatre that cultivated emotional engagement. 'In-Yer-Face' theatre used emotional shock to penetrate the numb cynicism that its creators perceived. Documentary theatre used observation and the cultivation of sympathy to enlist its audience in a shared understanding of what was hidden, not understood or not noticed. The article analyses the functioning of emotional enlistment to engage the audience politically in two examples of documentary theatre, Black Watch and Guantanamo.In the early years of the twenty-first century, critical discourses characterizing the theatre of the foregoing decade increasingly shared common ground in the distinctions and family resemblances that they identified. This was a moment 223

Theatre arts in UK city of culture evaluation practices: the case for headphone verbatim

“…The above passage by theatre scholar Derek Paget has been welcomed by academics and practitioners (Anderson and Wilkinson, 2007; Wake, 2010; Taylor, 2011) as one of the earliest working definitions of verbatim theatre as a theatre arts practice. Over time, verbatim theatre has adapted to also include the practices of headphone verbatim (Wake, 2013, p. 321) as a sub-genre.…”

After In-Yer-Face Theatre

“…17 Lib Taylor, examining the parallels and distinctions between "In-Yer-Face" drama and the "fact-based" theater that followed on its heels, argues that the former "sought its politics through shock and disgust," while the latter "addressed events and issues that belonged squarely in the realm of political discourse, but treated these things by engaging the audience … emotionally in the detail of real stories." 18 Taylor's central thesis-that the "strategies of immediacy and directness" found in the nineties new wave are cultivated, in verbatim theater, into strategies of "emotional enlistment" 19 -will be revisited later in this chapter, when Taylor's emphasis on subjective attachment to political mindsets is reexamined in light of current cultural forces.…”