Documentary Theatre: From the Avant-Garde to the Post-Truth Era

Documentary theatre is • "A theatre where they don't act" in the usual sense of the word; • A theatre that gives central place to the voices of real people and true stories; • A work of art that uses the methods of journalistic reportage, historical monograph, sociological research, but at the same time is neither one nor the other. • A place where social and political problems are debated and rethought, where it is possible to restore justice that has been missed by the justice system. • A unique stage phenomenon that has much in common with documentary film and non-fiction literature, as well as a performative component that is possible only when the stage and the audience meet. Documentary theatre has never been a popular phenomenon, but rather an underground one, although it became fashionable at some point in time and productions with its elements were in almost every theatre. In the lecture, we will talk about what this phenomenon is, what functions documentary theatre performed throughout the century of its existence and why it can be interesting today. We will also watch and discuss excerpts from famous documentary productions.
Lecturer: Elizaveta Spivakovskaya — theater scholar, theater critic, curator, teacher at the Un/Told Documentary Drama Workshop.