Stuart Young – författare

Documentary and Verbatim Theatre surveys the emergence and rise of work based on real life in contemporary theatre, exploring the artists, methodologies, plays, and central themes that have characterised its enduring popularity.After charting the recent history of modern documentary theatre in the twentieth century and the debates that have surrounded it in the past thirty years, each chapter examines in depth key practices - such as headphone verbatim and extreme verbatim, and practitioners - from Anna Deavere Smith and David Hare to The Civilians and DV8 Physical Theatre. Practitioners’ chosen topics, playwriting process, and engagement with sometimes fraught debates in the field are brought to the fore. Focusing on the various dramaturgical and theatrical strategies used to create and stage documentary theatre, this book provides a practice-centric understanding of some of the principal issues related to the form, including the tensions between fidelity to the documentary or verbatim record and the exercise of artistic licence; the ethical issues entailed in representing living people; the implications for actors and our understanding of acting; and our assumptions about aesthetic distancing.This is an essential introduction to documentary and verbatim theatre for theatre studies students, teachers, and scholars, as well as theatre practitioners.

Documentary and Verbatim Theatre surveys the emergence and rise of work based on real life in contemporary theatre, exploring the artists, methodologies, plays, and central themes that have characterised its enduring popularity.After charting the recent history of modern documentary theatre in the twentieth century and the debates that have surrounded it in the past thirty years, each chapter examines in depth key practices - such as headphone verbatim and extreme verbatim, and practitioners - from Anna Deavere Smith and David Hare to The Civilians and DV8 Physical Theatre. Practitioners’ chosen topics, playwriting process, and engagement with sometimes fraught debates in the field are brought to the fore. Focusing on the various dramaturgical and theatrical strategies used to create and stage documentary theatre, this book provides a practice-centric understanding of some of the principal issues related to the form, including the tensions between fidelity to the documentary or verbatim record and the exercise of artistic licence; the ethical issues entailed in representing living people; the implications for actors and our understanding of acting; and our assumptions about aesthetic distancing.This is an essential introduction to documentary and verbatim theatre for theatre studies students, teachers, and scholars, as well as theatre practitioners.

Documentary and Verbatim Theatre surveys the emergence and rise of work based on real life in contemporary theatre, exploring the artists, methodologies, plays, and central themes that have characterised its enduring popularity.After charting the recent history of modern documentary theatre in the twentieth century and the debates that have surrounded it in the past thirty years, each chapter examines in depth key practices - such as headphone verbatim and extreme verbatim, and practitioners - from Anna Deavere Smith and David Hare to The Civilians and DV8 Physical Theatre. Practitioners' chosen topics, playwriting process, and engagement with sometimes fraught debates in the field are brought to the fore. Focusing on the various dramaturgical and theatrical strategies used to create and stage documentary theatre, this book provides a practice-centric understanding of some of the principal issues related to the form, including the tensions between fidelity to the documentary or verbatim record and the exercise of artistic licence; the ethical issues entailed in representing living people; the implications for actors and our understanding of acting; and our assumptions about aesthetic distancing.This is an essential introduction to documentary and verbatim theatre for theatre studies students, teachers, and scholars, as well as theatre practitioners.

Documentary and Verbatim Theatre surveys the emergence and rise of work based on real life in contemporary theatre, exploring the artists, methodologies, plays, and central themes that have characterised its enduring popularity.After charting the recent history of modern documentary theatre in the twentieth century and the debates that have surrounded it in the past thirty years, each chapter examines in depth key practices - such as headphone verbatim and extreme verbatim, and practitioners - from Anna Deavere Smith and David Hare to The Civilians and DV8 Physical Theatre. Practitioners' chosen topics, playwriting process, and engagement with sometimes fraught debates in the field are brought to the fore. Focusing on the various dramaturgical and theatrical strategies used to create and stage documentary theatre, this book provides a practice-centric understanding of some of the principal issues related to the form, including the tensions between fidelity to the documentary or verbatim record and the exercise of artistic licence; the ethical issues entailed in representing living people; the implications for actors and our understanding of acting; and our assumptions about aesthetic distancing.This is an essential introduction to documentary and verbatim theatre for theatre studies students, teachers, and scholars, as well as theatre practitioners.

As a young man Stuart Young endured the horrors of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and survived. Later in life, in graphic detail, he recorded the experience the dreadful conditions, the brutal treatment, the sickness and starvation, the merciless routine of forced labour. Yet he also recorded the comradeship among the prisoners, their compassion and strength, and the pastimes and entertainments that helped them to come through an ordeal that is hard to imagine today. First he was held at the notorious Changi camp in Singapore Island, then in the camps in Thailand that accommodated POWs who were forced to work on the Death Railway. Perhaps the most revealing passages of his memoir recall the daily experience of captivity - the ceaseless battle to survive the backbreaking work, the cruelties of the guards and ever-present threat of disease. His account gives a harrowing insight into the daily reality of captivity and it shows why he was determined to document and make sense of what he and his fellow prisoners suffered.

As a young man Stuart Young endured the horrors of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and survived. Later in life, in graphic detail, he recorded the experience – the dreadful conditions, the brutal treatment, the sickness and starvation, the merciless routine of forced labour. Yet he also recorded the comradeship among the prisoners, their compassion and strength, and the pastimes and entertainments that helped them to come through an ordeal that is hard to imagine today. First he was held at the notorious Changi camp in Singapore Island, then in the camps in Thailand that accommodated POWs who were forced to work on the ‘Death Railway’. Perhaps the most revealing passages of his memoir recall the daily experience of captivity - the ceaseless battle to survive the backbreaking work, the cruelties of the guards and ever-present threat of disease. His account gives a harrowing insight into the daily reality of captivity and it shows why he was determined to document and make sense of what he and his fellow prisoners suffered.