QUESTION: ‘Verbatim theatre focuses on truth at the expense of

theatricality”. Discuss this statement only in reference to your

experience of creating your own verbatim piece.

Verbatim theatre is constructed from the testimony of individuals about a

specific topic. Verbatim encourages for the audience to feel and think about the
piece whilst also “answering difficult confronting questions others would rather
leave unasked.” The hardest thing for playwriters, when writing verbatim, is
creating a theatrically engaging piece whilst trying to conserve the powerful
authenticity of the truth. This was such the case when putting together our own
verbatim piece called ‘Curtains’. The concept of this play was stemmed from the
idea that we hoped to unveil the dark truth behind ‘love’. This meaning we
wished to unravel the heartbreaking truth of being in love whilst being abused
from different perspectives.

As we first began the process of coming up with our concept we sat down and
discussed what we wanted to explore. The three of us (Charlee, Eamonn and I)
came to the conclusion that we hoped to explore the idea of an abusive
relationship. Therefore we sent out a survey and questioned a few people about
what they perceive love to be and whether or not there are toxic relationships.
This links back to the concepts of verbatim theatre through the use of interviews
and an event that is normally left unquestioned. As we conducted our interviews
we decided that it’d be best to keep the people anonymous. We were also given
real testimonies from people about their own experience in an abusive
relationship. This motivated us more to investigate more about abusive
relationships. Thus allowing for us to have to discuss how we were going to
present these findings onstage. We came to the conclusion that we needed to
tread carefully over the real testimonies and change certain lines and names. We
hope that these scenes will estrange the audience and force them to question
the realities of this type of situation. This was to allow for the truth to be
conveyed as well as help for us to present a more theatrical piece of verbatim
theatre.

‘Curtains’ started to come together as we began to write it. We sat down and
went through what we wanted in our piece. As we worked through it we were set
up with a few complications about what we were trying to bring to the stage. As
we were writing the script we came to realise that it would be hard to have a
chronological narrative because we wanted to explore different paths in order to
keep it theatrical, but we also needed to ensure that the truth remained present
throughout. As the scriptwriting was being done, we also saw the need that our
blocking needed to reflect what we were presenting. We hoped to create this
through having a few structured movements, such as being in a line as we
present real testimonies. This is reflected in scenes 4 and 10. Once we had
finished writing our first script, we came to realise that it didn’t seem to flow and
was very jiggered. It was also at this time that we were researching about child
abuse, mainly Gabriel Fernandez. The reason for this is because we wanted to
get a grasp on how far this ‘loving’ abuse goes. I originally stumbled across this
Netflix series ‘The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez’, which inspired us to write about a
child’s perspective of their experience of love. Thus allowing for us to make the
audience question what is going on in society. Therefore causing for our piece to
be theatrically enticing whilst still conveying the truth.
As our piece started to come together, I personally could see it being something
amazing. As we re-read our script and finish the blocking we notice that the truth
is remaining evident throughout the piece. This is evident through the staging of
the piece as well as the different characterisations of characters. The truth about
abusive love is shown throughout by various characters and their experiences,
as well as when the characters at the beginning talk about their ideologies of
what love is and how it is seen by different people. This is a hard piece to wrap
one’s head around completely, and even though we have written, we still do not
know the full extent. The idea that some of these relationships still believe they
are in love or are loved by their parents despite being abused is something that
is unfathomable to comprehend. But, despite all this, we believe that even
though this is a dark piece of theatre is still theatrical enough to both be
entertaining as well as convey the truth clearly throughout.

Creating our own verbatim piece was a real eye-opener into exploring a new
topic that you don’t hear a lot about. Writing the script also caused for me to
tear up a bit because of the emotion behind what was said. It also caused for the
realisation that it is hard to distinguish between what you can write versus what
you shouldn’t. It is from this experience that back up the fact that it is hard to
create a theatrically engaging piece whilst still trying to conserve the powerful
authenticity of the truth.