“Of course you’re looking for emotional effect, but at other points in the story you’ll be looking for plot and facts , which means asking slightly dry questions – where they are, what they’re doing, who they’re waiting for etc. Those things are key to the highs and lows of the story.”
“One of the strengths of verbatim is the sort of rich text you just couldn’t make up.”
“You have to be quite upfront from the beginning. Even if you don’t know where your project will end up – if it’ll even get used.”
“Some people have both [of the] things you’re looking for: interesting characters and the potential to be developed narratively. Some people are brilliant, likable and accessible straight away, but they might not have much forward story; all their best stories have already happened to them. The best verbatim theatre is as much present tense as possible – it’s about capturing things as they happen.”
Alecky Blythe’s interview has provided me with an insight into the affects of verbatim theatre. I feel that verbatim recounts the words of real life people in interviews and conversations in a very intimate way. My intention as the performer is to create material which attempts to convey a particular story or message, and in the case of my performance a very serious message.
Alecky Blythe: On how to create verbatim theatre.
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Poor Virginia Woolf seemed doomed from the start. She suffered a nervous breakdown when her mother died when Virginia was just 13. Her father died just nine years later, causing another breakdown which resulted in a brief period of institutionalization. She and her sister were subjected to sexual abuse by their half brothers, which certainly did not help her state of mind.
It makes sense to start with the theory’s namesake, I think. For those of you who haven’t read The Bell Jar, it’s a thinly disguised autobiography about one girl’s spiral into depression including suicide attempts, hospital stays and shock treatment therapy.