ABSTRACT
The history of documentary art comprises one long argument about the very meanings of the terms document and documentary. The forms and contents of documents are very often concretions of ideology. In the case of theatre, one can easily point to plays from the seventeenth century and earlier that quote historical sources, but the motives behind those quotations differed from the motivations of a modern documentarian. Critical discourse about documentary theatre has tended to fall within three broad approaches: a liberal approach, a cultural materialist approach, and a postmodern approach. A useful set of terms for interpreting and discussing documentary theatre emerges at the point where theories of signification in documentary media intersect with critical readings of avant-garde collage and photomontage. This chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.
