{"id":875,"date":"2014-04-18T17:10:45","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T16:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=875"},"modified":"2014-04-18T17:13:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-18T16:13:29","slug":"get-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2014\/04\/get-real.html","title":{"rendered":"Get real"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michaela<\/a>

Michaela Coel in Home Photo: Ellie Kurttz<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

From your mouth to the director\u2019s ear \u2013 that has been one idea of verbatim theatre<\/a>. Using the words, experiences and sometimes the very inflections of interviewees as the basis for a production, verbatim has often seem to offer theatre a bracing hit of \u2018pure\u2019 reality, a window into authentic documentary material.<\/p>\n

But like all theatrical forms, verbatim is a shape-shifting beast. Last night I caught up with a fantastic piece at the National Theatre\u2019s Shed<\/a>, its small red cube of sparky doings. Home<\/em><\/a> is based on interviews with residents at an east London hostel for young people, and weaves the words of single mothers, refugees, teenagers booted out by their parents, and the staff who support them. You might expect gritty documentary \u2013 but the spoken segments swerved with glorious unpredictability into song: rap, soul, heartfelt r\u2019n\u2019b. One of the actors \u2013 the beatboxer Grace Savage \u2013 didn\u2019t say a word, but let her awesome larynx squiggle and sputter through the show, like an uncannily responsive radio.<\/p>\n

\"Grace<\/a>

Grace Savage in Home. Photo: Ellie Kurttz<\/p><\/div>\n

Home is a location, and more importantly an idea. All the interviewees are frank \u2013 they\u2019re grateful for the hostel as the place of last resort, but none of them quite considers it home. They tell you what has brought them there, and where they hope to reach. You could present their reflections in a journalistic style \u2013 as depositions as much as drama \u2013 but director Nadia Fall wants you to feel with them, not for them. As soon as a melody launches \u2013 lightly accompanied by a busker on guitar \u2013 the mood expands with the characters\u2019 fears and longings. As assistant dramaturge Rob Drummer writes in an invaluable background pack<\/a>, the \u2018music, sound and even movement… lift the work, give time to reflect.\u2019 It also helped the creative team resolve what \u2018is always the crux, the heat of working with verbatim material: how do you treat it with respect whilst also building a theatrical experience that transcends the text?\u2019<\/p>\n

(Fall, by the way, is undoubtedly a director to keep an eye on. In the past year or so, I\u2019ve seen three of her productions, each utterly absorbing and utterly distinct: Home follows a sumptuously entertaining The Doctor\u2019s Dilemma<\/em> by Shaw at the National, and the British premiere of Ayad Akhtar\u2019s Pulitzer-winning The Disgraced<\/em> <\/a>at the Bush. What links them is an ability to make ideas engaging, to help you feel the blood pulse through argument).<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the reliably thought provoking Andrew Haydon<\/a> wrote an interesting piece on stage design, wondering about a prevalent mode of British theatre, which often uses both naturalistic trappings in an overtly theatricalised space. What to call \u2018the style with no name\u2019, he wondered \u2013 and came up with \u2018naturalism and…\u2019 or \u2018naturalism but…\u2019 History may supply a snappier label, but for now this is spot-on \u2013 I\u2019ve had Haydon\u2019s terms in my head ever since I read them.<\/p>\n

Verbatim theatre might seem to nail you to naturalism, but theatre-makers play with the possibilities of the form. Those authentic words and experiences, it seems, can both anchor a show and let it fly. Verbatim (or, as Haydon might say, verbatim-but, verbatim-and) productions have been among the most revealingly theatrical of recent years. I\u2019m still floored by the way Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork made a musical from a community piecing itself together in London Road<\/em><\/a>. Chris Goode\u2019s marvellous Monkey Bars<\/em> <\/a>corkscrewed into my heart with its children\u2019s words voiced by wrong-footed adults. The Riots<\/em> <\/a>was a more conventional post-mortem of the events that rattled London in 2011, but the impassioned, snaking discussion that followed exemplified a new form \u2013 public inquiry and public forum combined.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s end with the heart-tugging moments when Home<\/em> settles into song, and gives voice to the yearning and sorrows that our daily prose keeps at bay. It\u2019s a commonplace to credit the internet with changing our notion of reality, but of course there\u2019s always been more to reality than reality. Thoughts and feelings are as real to us \u2013 more real \u2013 than simply the nubble of circumstance \u2013 and theatre keeps finding new ways to capture it.<\/p>\n

Follow David at @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  From your mouth to the director\u2019s ear \u2013 that has been one idea of verbatim theatre. Using the words, experiences and sometimes the very inflections of interviewees as the basis for a production, verbatim has often seem to offer theatre a bracing hit of \u2018pure\u2019 reality, a window into authentic documentary material. But like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,65,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-nadia-fall","9":"tag-national-theatre","10":"tag-theatre","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}