Now playing: Real life
Documentary theater puts true stories on stage
By Nina Metz
Special to the Tribune

Chicago Tribune
January 20, 2006

In recent years, as playwrights look for alternate ways to address political and social ills, documentary works of theater--which use the actual words of the people it portrays, as opposed to dialogue and situations from the author--are increasingly prevalent.

Next month, TimeLine Theatre presents the local premiere of "Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom," a series of first-person accounts of Muslim men--all British citizens or British residents--who had no connections to terrorism, but were nonetheless detained for extended periods as enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba by the United States. And through the end of January, Bailiwick Repertory is staging "Katrina: State of Emergency" about recent events on the Gulf Coast.

They're two of several such productions put on or that have visited Chicago in recent years.

"Guantanamo" was compiled by the British novelist Gillian Slovo and journalist Victoria Brittain, an editor and foreign correspondent for The Guardian newspaper before embarking on the project. The show, which also includes the reactions of stunned family members back in England, first debuted in London to strong critical acclaim in June 2004.

One of the stories recounted is of Jamal al-Harith, who was arrested during his travels through Pakistan.

"I went from Manchester to Pakistan and ended up in Guantanamo, can you believe it?" he told his interviewers. "Yes I went to Pakistan, well if that's my crime then you'll have to arrest plane loads of people. ... But I didn't actually get there." al-Harith was initially captured by the Taliban--who imprisoned him in Afghanistan believing he was a British spy. He was eventually released, only to be detained once again by British and American officials on the suspicion that he was a terrorist.

Of the documentary approach, Slovo says, "The authenticity of these modest people living in an extraordinary situation is, I think, what gives the play its tremendous power. It is a snapshot of the families at this moment in their lives, and their take on what has happened. What we had read or thought we knew was nothing compared to the real experience" described by those the playwrights spoke with. "Not knowing when, or if, they were going to be released was a kind of torture."

The piece was commissioned by London's Tricycle Theater, a well-regarded company that specializes in "tribunal" plays--topical works based on interviews and court transcripts. "The rule," says Slovo, "is you're not allowed to create any of the words, and have to be completely faithful to the thing you're representing."

In short, real life accounts can be just as compelling as those manufactured by a playwright.

A few years ago, a national-touring production of "The Exonerated" used a variation on the tribunal method to present stories of death row inmates whose wrongful convictions were overturned. And last year, Bailiwick debuted "Sin: A Cardinal Deposed," a compelling look at the charges of child molestation against the Boston Archdiocese and Cardinal Bernard F. Law's staunchly obtuse deposition statements.

"Katrina," its current show, is by Jeffrey Bruner, a film and theater critic for the Des Moines Register. Bruner assembled the script from sources that included blogs, Web sites, and newspapers, as well as television and radio broadcasts in an effort to depict that infamous one-week span when it seemed as though help for the Gulf Coast would never arrive.

"I thought true stories would be far more powerful than anything that could come from a playwright's mind," he says. "I wanted to capture a true representation of what was going at that time, that week. Even if you think you know what happened, you don't know what happened."

That's probably right, though unlike the stories of those imprisoned at Guantanamo, the tale of woe that engulfed New Orleans was--and still is--a major news story. Even those with only a casual interest in news are aware of the vast sea of ineptitude, destruction and suffering that resulted after the hurricane.

But the documentary method--in this case, anyway--failed to offer new insight on the story. As staged here--with its dutiful depiction of a frustrated Anderson Cooper going off on Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)--the play feels like a re-enactment, rather than a complex work of art that exposes its audience to unforeseen layers of meaning.

This is the biggest hurdle for documentary plays, but it's not hard to understand the genre's appeal. We, as a culture, put a lot of stock in the truth, which has increasingly become "the truth." Last week, revelations came to light that author James Frey exaggerated his past in his best-selling, Oprah-endorsed memoir about drug addiction, "A Million Little Pieces."

The truth these days is enigmatic and apparently subject to change. Stephen Colbert called this phenomenon "truthiness," in the best non-joke joke of his tenure so far on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." Can you blame a playwright who sidesteps this morass altogether and chooses instead to let the real words of real people speak for themselves?

Slovo sees another benefit, particularly when the material is serious-minded.

"There is a cliche that the truth is stranger than fiction, and often that is so true," she says. "To fictionalize the play would have deprived it of its power, deprived it of the fact that this is fact. I don't think you could have made up something quite as bizarre as what these people have been through.

"Audiences," she adds, "wouldn't believe it."