Course Blog #5 (Justin): Sincerely Authentic

Documentary theatre, or docudrama, has a rich and long history in the American theater – well known examples include the ‘Living Newspapers’ of the Federal Theater Project in the 1930s to more recent solo works by playwright/performers like Anna Deavere Smith and Spalding Gray. The form’s practice of commandeering language from personal interviews and publically-available transcriptions from legal proceedings is a hallmark of the documentary theater method, even becoming a standard of fictional works like today’s ‘ripped-from-the-headlines’ television dramas.

In the 1999 book Documentary Theatre in the United States: An Historical Survey and Analysis of its Content, Form, and Stagecraft, Gary Fisher Dawson explores the documentary style in theater and the various techniques it employs in order to signal a production’s seeming authenticity. He states, “The practitioner of documentary theater no longer is satisfied with the mere semblance of truth as an ideal…At a time when perception counts for more than substance…the documentary playwright opts for the real thing on-stage, and tries with the aid of a number of authentifying sign systems to accomplish this aim” (Dawson 93).  Dawson’s exploration of documentary theatre hinges on three ‘unities’ which he has identified as necessary to the form – the Unity of Factual Authenticity, the Unity of Primary Sources, and the Unity of Piscatorian Stage Devices.

Factual Authenticity is fulfilled through any process which highlights that a production’s text is quoted from a verifiable resource; often, producers of documentary theater employ tangible and textual signs to guarantee factual authenticity. Productions may provide audience members with sample “primary documents” for comparison to the performance’s spoken text and dialogue; publishing endnotes and footnotes in the actual dramatic texts published for future performance; and designing historical exhibitions for audiences to view prior to, during, or after seeing a performance. The presence at the show's premiere of the six exonerated individuals whose stories are related in the play may be considered a living example of this particular unity.

Related to factual authenticity is a production’s attempt at fulfilling what Dawson terms ‘the Unity of Primary Sources.” A docudrama will provide or show evidence of the actual sources from which it draws its text. In comparison to other docudrama scripts, our copy of The Exonerated is relatively free of evidence concerning the primary sources from which the text arises. Other than the description of the interview and transcription process provided in the Introduction, we have surprisingly little pointing to the production’s primary sources.

Dawson’s third unity, the Unity of Piscatorian Stage Devices, references theater pioneer Erwin Piscator (1893-1966). By employing devices like film projections, subtitles, supertitles, and representational insignia, he generated a sense of authenticity through visual representation that attempted to historicize the event for the audience. Plastering the set with headlines and quotes from newspaper texts, having actors read from official-looking documents, and relying on film or photographic images are all typical stage devices utilized to fulfill this particular unity. Surprisingly, The Exonerated specifically asks producers to not employ this form of stagecraft, as the “Notes on the Performance of the Play” state, “It’s generally a good idea to avoid stapling newspaper headlines to the back wall or throwing electric chairs all over the stage” (xvi). Perhaps the use of such stage devices has become a cliché of the docudrama style, and avoidance of such signs is now a stronger authenticating system for a production to use.

The Exonerated, as it is received through our particular copy of the text, does not appear to conform nicely with the unities put forward by Gary Fisher Dawson. As Black and Jensen reference in their Notes, "except for a few instances, [the performers] are telling their stories, not reliving them. Trust the stories" (xvi). Thus, emphasis in generating 'sincerity' seemingly comes from the audience's reception of the performers as appropriate stand-ins for the exonerated individuals: they are the only characters in the play not to be double cast; they are the performers producers are instructed to cast according to race ["We strongly support nontraditional casting in general; but in the case of this play, it dilutes the reality of many of the issues involved" (xvi-xvii)]; and they must invest in non-stereotypical yet closely accurate dialects ["be careful not to get generic southern for everything" (xvi)]. It is in this strong request for productions to make casting choices that adhere closely to the true-life individual that the production's history of relying on celebrities (very well-known celebrities!) becomes troubling. A performer's celebrity, such as the presence of Susan Sarandon as Sunny, cannot help but result in an unproductive or unpurposeful phenomenological rupture - an audience member cannot continuously separate the portrayal of Sunny from the presence of famous Susan. Black and Jensen's concerns about casting and how it can affect reception of the piece is perhaps shown to be insincere by the continuous presence of celebrity within productions of The Exonerated.

Dawson, Gary Fisher. Documentary Theatre in the United States: An Historical Survey and Analysis of its Content, Form, and Stagecraft. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Please note, I have borrowed material above from a recent conference presentation that I gave concerning another documentary theater project. That paper was directly concerned with an artistic group’s attempts to reveal the ‘sincerity’ or ‘authenticity’ of their staged readings of recent courtroom transcripts, and the material felt too relevant to this prompt to not repurpose here.