« They tell you it’s authentic but it’s not » : Pour une approche « reconstructionniste » du théâtre verbatim contemporain en Grande-Bretagne

• Main Author: Cyrielle Garson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2018-03-01
• Series: Études Britanniques Contemporaines
• Subjects: aesthetics; authenticity; Britain; contemporary; paradox; political implications
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/4372
• ISSN: 1168-4917; 2271-5444

Standardly, British verbatim theatre is perceived as the art of reconstruction par excellence. Indeed, everything we see and hear on stage is as it was, within the means of the theatre, that is. At a deeper level, regardless of whether a given contemporary verbatim artist chooses or not to adhere to the outlined principle, it would seem that this type of theatre relentlessly pursues an impossible feat ‘trapped between the rock of pre-modernist fundamentalism and the hard place of postmodernist neo-liberalism’ (Tomlin 356). As Linden Wilkinson argues, verbatim theatre is ‘not concerned with reconstructing the known world’ (132), and yet it is my contention that it engages with what we may call a ‘reconstructionist’ project, one that is perhaps capable of changing the current focus and purpose of the discussion around theatre and performance. In other words, there is an irresistible paradox at the core of these practices, surrounding the notion of ‘reconstruction’, that this paper will endeavour to address. Drawing from recent examples of British verbatim theatre, it will be argued that the notion of reconstruction at work in verbatim performance is multifaceted, reimagining its discourse in an increasingly skeptical age. It will therefore be necessary to propose a typology of the different kinds of reconstruction that permeate these works, before attempting to articulate their social, aesthetic and political implications.