Actor, character, and the political in Nola Chilton's documentary theatre

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the unique documentary theatre of Nola Chilton, an American-born theatre director and acting educator in Israel. It first presents Chilton's early personal and professional biography in New York from which her actor-based documentary theatre developed. It then discusses the circular trajectory of Chilton's dynamic model of documentary theatre in Israel, focusing on several key performances. Finally, it introduces Chilton's recent reduced documentary theatre with its bare acting, as developed and produced at Tel Aviv University.

KEYWORDS:

• Documentary theatre
• alternative theatre
• social commitment
• bare acting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Shulamith Lev-Aladgem, PhD, is an associate professor of theatre studies and former Chair of the Theatre Arts Department at Tel Aviv University (2013–2017). She is a community-based theatre practitioner and researcher as well as a trained actress who uses her acting experience in both her research and teaching. Lev-Aladgem's main interests incorporate play theory, performance studies, and cultural studies and their relation to community-based theatre, political theatre, alternative theatre, educational drama, drama therapy, and feminist theatre. Her research on these subjects has been published in numerous leading periodicals in the US, Europe, and Israel. She has published two books: Theatre in Co-Communities: Articulating Power, published by Palgrave, Macmillan (2010) and Standing Front Stage: Resistance, Celebration and Subversion in Community-Based Theatre, published by Haifa University Press and Pardes (2010) (in Hebrew).

Notes

1. I do not intend here to discuss each and every documentary performance of Chilton nor its perception by the audience and critics, but only those performances that outline the circular trajectory of Chilton's model.

2. All translations from Hebrew are mine.

3. In Lolita in Tehran (2011), based on the book by the Iranian author and professor, Azar Nafisi, the actresses who articulated the problematic life experiences of seven female students of Nafisi, ware galabiyas in order to indicate these real women. In the following performances such a visual sign was completely eliminated.