Verbatim Theatre. The Role of the Playwright and the Actors

Verbatim Theatre. The Role of the Playwright and the Actors
Author: Kassidy-Rose McMahon
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 6
Release: 2022-06-08
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3346658570

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Theater Studies, Dance, grade: Undergraduate, Griffith University (School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science), course: Contemporary Theatre and Its Origins, language: English, abstract: This presentation explores the role of the playwright and the actors in Verbatim Theatre performance.

Creating Verbatim Theatre from Oral Histories

Creating Verbatim Theatre from Oral Histories
Author: Clare Summerskill
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429594860

Offering a roadmap for practicing verbatim theatre (plays created from oral histories), this book outlines theatre processes through the lens of oral history and draws upon oral history scholarship to bring best practices from that discipline to theatre practitioners. This book opens with an overview of oral history and verbatim theatre, considering the ways in which existing oral history debates can inform verbatim theatre processes and highlights necessary ethical considerations within each field, which are especially prevalent when working with narrators from marginalised communities. It provides a step-by-step guide to creating plays from interviews and contains practical guidance for determining the scope of a theatre project: identifying narrators and conducting interviews, developing a script from excerpts of interview transcripts and outlining a variety of ways to create verbatim theatre productions. By bringing together this explicit discussion of oral history in relationship to theatre based on personal testimonies, the reader gains insight into each field and the close relationship between the two. Supported by international case studies that cover a wide range of working methods and productions, including The Laramie Project and Parramatta Girls, this is the perfect guide for oral historians producing dramatic representations of the material they have sourced through interviews, and for writers creating professional theatre productions, community projects or student plays.

Beyond Documentary Realism

Beyond Documentary Realism
Author: Cyrielle Garson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2021-02-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110715767

Verbatim theatre, a type of performance based on actual words spoken by ''real people'', has been at the heart of a remarkable and unexpected renaissance of the genre in Great Britain since the mid-nineties. The central aim of the book is to critically explore and account for the relationship between contemporary British verbatim theatre and realism whilst questioning the much-debated mediation of the real in theses theatre practices.

Telling the Truth

Telling the Truth
Author: Robin Belfield
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2018-02
Genre: Experimental theater
ISBN: 9781848424913

A practical guide to creating and producing verbatim theatre, by an experienced theatre-maker and practitioner.

The Elements of Playwriting

The Elements of Playwriting
Author: Louis E. Catron
Publisher: Waveland Press
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2017-12-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1478636882

Louis Catron imbued experienced and fledgling playwrights with inspiration, guidance, and a passport to maximizing their writing skills as well as their overall ability to transform written words into a stage production. He understood that being a playwright is more than putting pen to paper. It involves expressing a personal point of view, bringing a vision to life, developing dimensional characters, structuring a play’s action, and finding producers, directors, and actors to bring the work to life. In the second edition Norman Bert infuses the enduring merits of Catron’s original work with examples, technological developments, and trends geared to today’s readers. Bert’s play references are familiar to contemporary students, including examples from plays written since 2000. He includes useful information on web-based research and the electronic submission process. A new chapter focuses on the playwright’s responsibility to lay the groundwork for production elements like casting, design, theatre architecture as it impacts audience–performer relationships, staging modes, and the uses and expectations of stage directions. Also new to this edition are reading resources for delving deeper into topics discussed.

Creativity in Theatre

Creativity in Theatre
Author: Suzanne Burgoyne
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2018-09-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3319789287

People who don’t know theatre may think the only creative artist in the field is the playwright--with actors, directors, and designers mere “interpreters” of the dramatist’s vision. Historically, however, creative mastery and power have passed through different hands. Sometimes, the playwright did the staging. In other periods, leading actors demanded plays be changed to fatten their roles. The late 19th and 20th centuries saw “the rise of the director,” in which director and playwright struggled for creative dominance. But no matter where the balance of power rested, good theatre artists of all kinds have created powerful experiences for their audience. The purpose of this volume is to bridge the interdisciplinary abyss between the study of creativity in theatre/drama and in other fields. Sharing theories, research findings, and pedagogical practices, the authors and I hope to stimulate discussion among creativity and theatre scholar/teachers, as well as multidisciplinary research. Theatre educators know from experience that performance classes enhance student creativity. This volume is the first to bring together perspectives from multiple disciplines on how drama pedagogy facilitates learning creativity. Drawing on current findings in cognitive science, as well as drama teachers’ lived experience, the contributors analyze how acting techniques train the imagination, allow students to explore alternate identities, and discover the confidence to take risks. The goal is to stimulate further multidisciplinary investigation of theatre education and creativity, with the intention of benefitting both fields.

Verbatim, Verbatim

Verbatim, Verbatim
Author: Will Hammond
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2012-09-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1849436657

Five specially commissioned discussions of verbatim theatre - in the words of the people who make it. 'What a verbatim play does is flash your research nakedly. It’s like cooking a meal but the meat is left raw.’ - Max Stafford-Clark Plays which use people’s actual words as the basis for their dramaare not a new phenomenon. But from the stages of national theatres to fringe venues and universities everywhere, ‘verbatim’ theatre, as it has come to be known, is currently enjoying unprecedented attention and success. It has also attracted high-profile criticism and impassioned debate. In these wide-ranging essays and interviews, six leading dramatists describe their varying approaches to verbatim, examine the strengths and weaknesses of its techniques and explore the reasons for its current popularity. They discuss frankly the unique opportunities and ethical dilemmas that arise when portraying real people on stage, and consider some of the criticisms levelled at this controversial documentary form. 'The intention is always to arrive at the truth.' - Nicolas Kent

London Road

London Road
Author: Alecky Blythe
Publisher: NHB Modern Plays
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: City dwellers
ISBN: 9781848421769

The extraordinary work of verbatim musical theatre about the impact of the Ipswich prostitute murders.

The Power of One

The Power of One
Author: Louis E. Catron
Publisher: Drama
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2000
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

This book demonstrates techniques of writing, acting, and directing that encourage the reader to create a personal theatrical experience.

Thinking about the Playwright

Thinking about the Playwright
Author: Eric Bentley
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 1987
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780810107335

Essays discuss Ibsen, Strindberg, O'Neill, Brecht, Shaw, acting styles, theater controversies, translation, regional drama, and the nature of theater.