F you think thatverbatim theatre issimply actors standingon stage addressing theaudience from interviewtranscripts you'd be right.

But if you think that's all it is you're infor a mind-expanding surprise. Verbatimis one of the most malleable, diverse andsurprising forms of contemporary theatre.

When I was in London recently Iwent to the National Theatre to see averbatim musical. Some bright sparkat the National thought it might becreatively inspiring to pair a variety ofplaywrights with a number of composersand see where the workshop processmight lead them. Playwright AleckyBlythe, who works in a form of "recordeddelivery" verbatim theatre, where actorsactually wear headphones and performexactly the rhythm and cadence ofthe playwright's interview subjects,had spoken to residents living in aneighbourhood in lpswich where a seriesof gruesome murders of sex workers hadtaken place. Composer Adam Cork setthese interviews to music, using all theums and ahs, hesitations, and repetitionsof the interviewees.

The result, London Road, Teft mebreathlessly excited about the possibilitiesofthe form, and I wasnt alone. The seasonsold out and attracted five star ratingsfrom the critics. How do I communicatethe thrill of seeing 11 people on stagesinging in the raw beauty of verbatimspeech? As in opera, the content of whatthey are singing is in many ways lessimportant than the layering of emotion,the complicating and contradicting thathappens when you speak to "real" subjects,the palpable danger ofexamining subjectmatter which has been unadulterated bytime or distanced by geography. Whenone of the interviewees admitted thatshe would like to "shake his hand an'saythank you" to the serial killer for gettingthe sex workers off her street there wasan audible gasp of horrified recognitionfrom the audience. They were beingasked to simultaneously'suspend theilrdisbelief and participate in the artifice

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great classical drama. For the plal,wrightthis is nothing new. There isn't a writerwho has sat through a writing coursewho hasn't been bludgeoned with aninsistence to find the universal in theparticular. And in that verbatim isperhaps just a very 21st century way ofacknowledging attribution and admittingthat writers are bowerbirds, thieves, andeavesdroppers.

Much is made of verbatim's claim togreater "authenticity" as a form than otherfictional writing. To -y mind, peoplestanding on stage is a construct andwhatever theyte saying has been carefullyarnnged and manipulated and rehearsedto create the meaning and interruptaudience assumptions in that way thatall theatre makers aim for. What is moreauthentic, perhaps, is the value a verbatimteam or writer places on negotiating arelationship with the community beingwritten about, seeking their input into

actors were collecting for a charity thathelps sex workers make the transitioninto other employment in Ipswich.

The editor has asked me to detail whatI think are some of the pitfalls ofworkingin the verbatim form. Well, you may beaccused of having little more literarytalent than an editor (present publicationexcepted), you may be patronisinglycalled an oral historian, some may joke

"you didn't really write it". You may alsobe accused ofbeing on a rather "worthy"jag, you may have the label "political"bandied about but not in a good waysince it will be followed with "polemical"and even that hoary-old-chestnut-of-the-imaginatively-bland "didactic". The onlyway you can go around such dismissals isto for God's sake not be didactic, worthyor merely illustrative. Use the verbatimform to be contradictory and provocative,to, of course, ask questions rather thanprovide answers, to examine premises

z6

"How do I communicate the tbrill of seeing 11 people onstage singing in the raw beauty of verbatim syteech?"

of the actors beautifully rendering "thetune of the spoken voice" (as Blythedescribes it) and at the same time beconfronted by the fact that the events,the subject, the humanity examined inthe play happened literally just down theroad. And that has to be the continuingappeal to me of this form of theatre. Notsome slavish assertion that what happensin our own gutters and under our ownbedspreads to the woman and man nextdoor is any more relevant or more movingor more terrifying but the profoundlyrenewing wonder that there is, in localcommunities, all the barbarism andcourage and generosity and evil andspiritual depth that we can also see in

the result and acknowledging that youdont write their story without some kindof interrelationship.

Verbatim work seeks to bring diversecommunities of interest into the theatrethemselves, to allow them that essentialhuman right ofbeing able to see yourselfand your community conjured to thestage and thereby reflect on both thestrengths and injustices of your world.Verbatim projects also often considerit obligatory to "give back" to thecommunity from which they have drawnstories, to become in a very rcal way acontinuing part of the life and narrativeof the community represented. On theway out the door ftom London Road the

which have no answers (aren't they theonly ones worth asking?). I heard ofone verbatim team who wrote a playabout a subject who had died but didn'tbother to get in touch with the familyof that person. Well, that's not just badplaywriting that's poor ethical judgementand insensitivity. People are going totrust you with their feelings and theirlives so be worthy of their trust. On theother hand, don't make the mistake ofthinking that you're there to proselytisefor the community youte writing about.Like any artist you are there to ask thedificult questions and hold up whatmight be an ugly reflection in the mirror.

But never doubt the myriad, jaw-

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dropping possibilities of this form'I-rgi". a dance work that uses theverbatim confessions of some grouP toelucidate their reality in movement anddance (the National Theatre of Scotlanddid it in Black Watch based on interviewswith soldiers but imagine a verbatimdance work with steelworkers or bridge-builders). There are many Australianpractitioners working in this form insensationally innovative and extremelydiverse ways. Version 1.0 with, frequently,materials on the public record; KateChampion in dance; Roslyn Oades withheadphone verbatim; Damien Millerand Campion Decent's award-winningcreations; Michael Gurr's dabblingsin this form; the Melbourne WorkersTheatre under the inspired directionof Gorkem Acarofilu and manY othersoverseas too numefous to name butranging from German collective Rimini

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Protokoll to Anna Deavere Smith, fromMois6s Kaufman to Steven Soderbergh.

This column was not commissioned toprovide any kind of definitive list only,i hop., to acquaint readers with thepossibilities of verbatim as a dynamicand changing form, and to observe thatto characterise verbatim Practitioners as

technological reapers merely collectingand collating is reductive nonsense. Oursubject as playwrights is always humanbehaviour under pressure - verbatim is

as much a process as a form, as mucha verb as a noun. It is a practice whichacknowledges that humans operate forbetter or worse in groups and often seeks

to articulate to the stage the culturaland psychological pressures or assets ofthe group, without ever losing dramaticsight of the individual character withinit. For that reason verbatim playwrightsand other verbatim theatre makers are

often more obsessed (if you like) withwhat a community can achieve or how itcan destroy the individual' and that, in a

culture persuaded by the importance ofthe self, may still be one of the biggestaesthetic and artistic challenges thatverbatim-influenced theatre makes.

Alana Valentine! plays Potrrlrtlltlinb and Rtn Rilbttn are

currently on the NSW HSC Drama Syllabus. Her most recent

play Hwdfil d Love, setat the world-renowned AlceSpirWBulk

fesrlwl was performed in English and Pitjantjatlara at the 201 0

Darwin Festival and then toured to Cairns and Alice Springs

Ihe tour raised $10,000 from audience donations and beanie

sales toward assistinq Central Desert mob living with kidney

disease.Alana is cunently the recipient of a Literature Board

Fellowship from the Australia Council for theArts, Her next

production will be the world premiere of it4.P, a play bgEi on

interviews with Australian iemale politiciant

by the Streetlheatre in Canbena and

30, 201 1. She was recentlY in the UK

HEAD FULL OF LOVE, PHOTO BY GLEI{N CAMPBELT FOR DARWIN FESTIVAL'

27

studying the behaviour of neutron