Post 9: Verbatim Play Project: Does Verbatim Theatre Even Exist?

Verbatim Play Project: To Drive or To Cats.

-Recorded and Transcribed to the best of my ability, though I'm sure my human qualities skewed it a bit.

-I did not get consent to record this, but I plan to tell everyone next class and, by then, we will have experienced this piece and I could retract it if needed. (giggle as I ask for forgiveness later)

-Key of characters:    / overlap   … thought continuing over next text or coming into from last person’s thoughts.

SCENE Favorite

(Ambient keys and bags adjusting roller chairs and keyboard. A random girl humming as students are coming into class)   

A-     …well I found the Qlab folder/

B-     oh yeah?

A-     … but I don’t see where it… mentions…the small project

B-     I think it was a separate link… via moodle/

C-     ..the… to turn in the…    It was email.

D-     It was email?!...

C-     Yeah

D-     I’m gonna send her an email but, but Shannon mentioned it in class

B-   But she was going to upload a moodle something/

A-     I thought it was a google Drive.

B-     I emailed as well cause I couldn’t… find the moodle thing… I couldn’t find a link that worked at least.

A-     yeah… none of these links… just bring me to a different… file… oh, here it is! Oh no its, that’s where you drop the logic files unless on here, ok yeah no, ok here so it’s it’s it’s the last one where/

B-     I feel like…/ when I tried

A-     That says small project 2 this’s a different class, this is a different class’s small project

B-     I tried to add it and it wouldn’t let me, you know how it like, it either makes something available or not, it would not let me put it into anything that… was connected to that link… Your shirt has a lot of cats.

E-     Yeah It does. It’s one of my favorites.

When it comes to verbatim theatre that I have seen or heard, I’m not sure I recognized that it fits into this category while I was experiencing it, if I’ve experienced much at all. And, even now, studying a bit about the style, no shows pop up as pieces that I identified in this category from brain scans of past visits to the theatre. Does that mean that I haven’t seen or read any? I’m fairly sure this is not the case, but perhaps it is difficult to separate the verbatim label from experiences we’ve all had and then (at least perhaps from a playwright’s perspective) recall them strongly enough to want to write about them.

If I were to think about the verbatim play attempt above, having not listened to the recording, I’m fairly certain I would have forgotten about the conversation about cats, because it was much less important in the moment than finding the link to upload the homework. However, in listening to the recording, I found that the dude with the cat shirt shifted our entire conversation in the moment. It was an obstacle to the initial goal which was to get homework turned in correctly. But it was so powerful at that moment. For what it’s worth, my memory had almost completely forgotten about the cat shirt even though it only happened earlier today (perhaps in part because my allergy to cats makes me prefer to forget about them, sorry friends who love them dearly). The brain does weird things when it prioritizes the importance of our experiences. I can understand Peter Cheesemen’s urging argument to make it the responsibility of more than one person to interpret the material. However, isn’t a director putting his spin on any piece of theatre or film? Isn’t the playwright choosing that which should be said and what might have more impact as dark matter? Goffman, again, comes to mind when we try to delineate between what a playwright/director/design team/company of actors “gives” and what the audience receives or what the conglomeration of that work “gives off.” A piece of theatre is created to give a specific message, but that may not be what the receiver receives, based on the effectiveness of the framing. I’m not sure it’s ever possible to get completely neutral even with verbatim theatre, because there is always a human of some kind re-telling the story from their perspective. Even robots are skewed based on their human creator’s perspective.

Now that I think of it, I’ve seen probably hundreds of documentary-style shows if you consider Europe travel videos by Rick Steves, NOVA specials with Alan Alda, Cooking shows by Jaques Pepin, and history pieces on the BBC.  Even Garrison Keillor episodes of Prairie Home Companion probably have some element of verbatim in the comment that the artists have between sets as they ease into their next prepared piece (something that happened in rehearsal, they liked it and recreated the shtick between sets for performance), much like Carol Burnett was known on her show for being able to improvise better than the writing itself, I’m sure some came from happy mistakes in rehearsal. I would not consider any of these examples verbatim theatre if we go to the truest definition because every episode has an ultimate story to tell and lens to focus our experience through. But how does this differ from verbatim theatre, really?

If the definition is that every word and movement that is re-created is not changed in any way from its original, I would argue that there is no such thing as verbatim theatre. Instead I offer that this label is a way to categorize those pieces that are most like the original but are not recorded digitally and reproduced. Instead, they are “re-called” by a human who experienced something worth repeating for someone else in this world.

Endless Stairways, Giants, and Sinking Time.

Endless Stairways, Giants, and Sinking Time.

In thinking about art that stands out to me in terms of length or elements of time, I first thought of extremes of time in semi-popular song form. Crash and the Boys perform a four-second song in this clip (You only need to watch from second 16 to 20 in the clip). Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven seemed like an endless song when it was played as the last song at every middle school dance I ever attended. It seemed that all the kids who were lucky enough to have a dance partner, or unlucky depending on your opinion, stood as far away as arms length would let them swaying anywhere from eight to twenty minutes depending on the version of the song used. The song seemed like it would never end, perhaps not only because of its length and repetitive use due to popularity, but also the mellow-end-of-the-night-mood reception to the song. I laugh that, even today, it is still often used at dances 20-30 years after my first repetitive encounter. What gives it that staying power? Is it the length, the message or the mood, the “wind down, almost done, reminiscent feel”? Who knows. Here’s a Link to an article arguing it to be the greatest rock song ever, and a link to a little different live version of the song(this one lasting ten minutes and thirty-nine seconds).

Funnily enough, in trying to find just how long Stairway to Heaven actually was, I stumbled upon a different stairway to heaven. The Haiku stairs in Hawaii, renamed the stairway to heaven, and an interesting sight of seemingly endless stairs and stats of the length it would take to climb up and down them. This is definitely worth viewing and a piece of art in photography dealing with length. The photograph of the stairs looks like they disappear into the air.

Next I saw this beautiful painting by Cyril Rolando and had two distinct thoughts. Firstly, the amount of time it takes for ships to sail from one port to the next and how much power water has to “turn the tide” or affect the length of time that the ship is out to sea. Another painting of Rolando’s depicts hourglasses sinking to the bottom of the sea representing in my mind the inevitable loss of time in some way. Unfortunately I could not find the specific names of the paintings but you can access the website here to see this and many more via his site.

In seeing the comparison between the size of the water woman and the sailors that may be on those ships, it made me think about the “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” movies of the early 90’s where every scene that the BIG world came in contact with the small world’s perspective, it was treated in slow motion in order for the audience to handle the action in connecting those two very different worlds. As giants are typically portrayed, they move and respond more slowly than the small world. Gulliver’s Travels is another story that this portrait led me to think about, this big and small world and how distance between the eye level of a giant to a non-giant is so far that those worlds seem distanced by size and speed in how the stories are portrayed. Perhaps the moderation of these extremes would dull the beauty of these extremes when it comes to looking for an admirable piece of work. To pose a “take” on the combination of pieces of significant duration or length and pieces of short duration or length without “stirring the opposites together and losing their individuality” is to be admired and a lovely way to keep things alive.

I’ll close with my first attempt at a 140-character Twitter play. (Alternate between 2 people, or two personalities of one person)

Where’s it gone? You know. Lost for half a year to reappear. Hibernating! What did you do this morn when you heard the horn? What? You know.

Post 7: Mermaids and Metamorphoses

Post 7: Mermaids and Metamorphoses

Richard Schechner’s “6 Axioms for Environmental Theatre” got me thinking about ways in which a play or part of a play could benefit by being removed from its conventionally assigned stagings and brought to life in an “environmentally immersive key.” In riffing, I stumbled on several that may be worth noting but perhaps do not “float” to the top after deliberation. Because I’m full of pun thoughts today, one random “bubble burst” I had was with Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses. It seems like the necessary pool hinders many theatres from wanting to take on the show, even though it might have been of great interest to begin with for a particular season. Conversely, when the show is selected for a season, it often becomes the conversation point for years to come based on how successful (or unsuccessful) the pool was in construction and utilization during the run of the show. So many themes of water, apart from the actual water (woman by the water, all things gold returned to normal by finding a mistic pool, the sea god Poseidon, and Midas finds the pool and is restored, to name a few) give me the sense that a transformative take on this show could be produced near water, instead of having to construct a pool, or a found space being an already constructed pool for a differents purpose..  I remember seeing a TV special about becoming a live mermaid and a team of people that create a haven for people to visit where they can watch mermaids live in a habitat (or, at least, people transformed into mermaids for the sake of spectacle and a show). Yes, there are places where people train to become, and then embody the lives of mermaids.

Weeki Watchee is one of these places, boasting a show both above and below water in their 400 seat auditorium. https://weekiwachee.com/mermaids/  They already advertise online their version of Hans-Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid. One could argue that this example doesn’t fit into the category of “found spaces” but the pool in which the mermaids perform is not like the pool that is normally constructed for this production. Because it was constructed for a different purpose, I would argue it is a found space for this show, because it wasn’t built for Metamorphoses’ purpose. My mind keeps “swimming” with ideas about how to frame the story so that it could possibly fit into all six categories. Instead of fitting a circle peg into a square hole, I’ll entertain my take on how this show may or may not fit into each of Schechner’s Six Axioms.

1) A set of related transactions: Yes. The scenes are all mostly relatable through water.

2) All space is used for audience and performance: No. Audience members are not expected to swim and performers are not expected to sit as spectators. Though could it be possible to invite audiences of people who can swim and were willing to venture to volunteer in order to experience this take at a script any day.

3) Takes place in a “Found space” or totally transformed space: No. It is not a found space for the sake of the show, though it has been found as a supportive environment for actors who swim.

4) Focus is flexible and variable: If I directed this production of the show, I may be determined to understand the water’s function and use more often to showcase the flexibility and variation of many student’s/actors’ choices.

5) All elements speak their own language: Yes, to a point. It seems lighting would be thrilled to reflect and refract light on surfaces to create more art. Sound would be different with the water in that it warps any sound we may get under water, making other senses more tuned in.

6) The text need to be the neither starting point nor the goal of a production: I’m not sure I could answer this one yet. Schechner says, “Each production contains its own possibilities,” and goes further to say, “If the theatrical event is a set of related transactions, then the text-once rehearsal begins- will participate in these transactions.” This mentions text but then also offers that there may be no text at all. If some of the action were done under water by the trained mermaids, the text would be swallowed and the use of movement and light may be more primary in the storytelling of those chosen sections.

One could go deeper into the possibilities of this pairing of space and show, but how many more water references can I come up with before I’m “washed up” or “sunk?” Too many.

Sweet sailing swashbucklers and your merry mermaids.