ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the origins and aims of verbatim theatre, discussing well-known productions by verbatim theatre playwrights and theatre companies. Some other related dramatic forms that can be generated from interview content are also explored, in order to inform the reader’s own work in creating verbatim theatre from oral history interviews. These include documentary theatre, theatre of testimony, applied theatre and oral history performance. A brief history is provided of the development of verbatim theatre in the UK over the last half century, and theatre work based on interviews in the US, Australia and South Africa is also summarised. Options are laid out for some of the various forms that a play based on interviews can take.
Verbatim theatre productions differ in many ways from fictional plays, one of which is that they are often regarded as filling the gap of reporting in the mainstream media. Because verbatim plays are based on the stories of real people, there is frequently an assumption by the audience that, in some way, they present ‘a claim to truth’. A verbatim script, however, is one where the playwright heavily edits material gathered in the form of interviews, and consequently, it is the playwright’s own agenda and agency that will inform both the content of the final piece and the representation of the narrators who provided their stories for the play.
