We May not Know Reality, but it Still Matters – A Functional Analysis of ‘Factual Elements’ in the Theatre

Abstract

Postmodernism has revolutionised our concept of Knowledge, establishing it firmly as a relative concept that is created and valid only in a specific discourse. As a result of this re-examination, our notion of Reality has been changed irrevocably. Although many concepts, such as the dichotomy of fact and fiction, continue to be used in everyday life, they are now highly contentious from a theoretical point of view. Describing the relationship between theatre and the world that surrounds it (our everyday ‘reality’) becomes increasingly difficult in such a context, particularly with regard to theatrical forms that are characterized by their extensive use of material borrowed from the world outside the play. Using Gladiator Games and Vincent in Brixton as examples, this article demonstrates that neither the return to theoretically outdated concepts nor the radical relativism of postmodernism can offer satisfactory interpretations of documentary and biographical theatre. As a solution to this dilemma it suggests a functional approach that overcomes the schism between modern and postmodern concepts. Inspired by the sociology of knowledge, it acknowledges that the perception of these plays is characterized by the idea of different degrees of reality or factuality without granting these notions the status of absolute ontological categories. A discussion that focuses on the similarities between these plays and discourses outside the theatre can then provide useful insights into their reception and production. At the same time it suggests that the sense of acceptable and unacceptable uses of such material can be maintained without evoking the ideas of historical accuracy and Truth.

Notes

Linda Hutcheon refers to the imprecise use of the term; see Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 37.

Some explicitly require ‘a serious concern for historical truth’ (Niloufer Harben, Twentieth-Century English History Plays. From Bond to Shaw[Houndsmill: Macmillan, 1988], p. 18), while others use this criterion as a means to classify different forms of historical drama – for example, Mark Berninger, Neue Formen des Geschichtsdramas in Großbritannien und Irland (Trier: Wissenshaftlicher Verlag, 2006).

Vincent in Brixton, by Nicholas Wright; dir. Richard Eyre; perf. Clare Higgins, Jochum ten Haaf; National Theatre transfer to Wyndham Theatre, August 2002; and Vincent in Brixton, by Nicholas Wright; dir. Roger Haines; perf. Gus Gallagher, Sheila Ruskin; Library Theatre Manchester, 28 September 2004 and 11 October 2004. The latter is included in an audience study in which in-depth interviews were conducted with seven spectators before and after their experience of four different biographical productions.

Tanika Gupta, Gladiator Games (London: Oberon, 2005). First production, dir. Charlotte Westenra, Sheffield Theatres with Theatre Royal Stratford East, October 2005.

Jean-François Lyotard, La condition postmoderne (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979), p. 7; trans. by Ursula Canton.

Lyotard, La condition postmoderne, p. 46.

Pascal Engel, Truth (Chesham: Acumen, 2002), p. 14.

William H. Epstein, Recognizing Biography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), p. 33.

Ruth Ronen, Possible Worlds in Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 1.

Marjorie Garber, ‘Introduction to Part V’, in The Seductions of Biography, ed. by Mary Riehl and David Suchoff (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 175–78 (p. 175).

Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History: The George Macauly Trevelyn Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge January – March 1961 (London: Macmillan, 1962), p. 30.

Ibid., p. 38.

Mary Evans, Missing Person: The Impossibility of Auto/Biography (London & New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 141.

Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism, p. xi.

Lyotard, La condition postmoderne, p. 48.

Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism, p. 119.

Leonard Krieger, Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 269.

John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (London: Penguin, 1996 [1995]), p. 8 for his definition of objectivity in an epistemic sense.

Alan Munslow, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 172 and 32.

Paula R. Backscheider, Reflections on Biography (Oxford: University Press, 1999), pp. 18 and 3.

Fakten und Fiktionen. Strategien fiktionalbiographischer Dichterdarstellungen in Roman, Drama und Film seit 1970, ed. by Christian von Zimmermann (Tübingen: Narr, 2000), p. 5.

Derek Paget, True Stories? Documentary Drama on Radio, Screen and Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 26.

Toby Young, ‘Spectator. 11 May 2002’, Theatre Record, 22.9 (2002), p. 551.

Ursula Canton, ‘Interviews with Student Spectators of Vincent in Brixton’ (unpublished, 2004).

Robert Gore-Langton. ‘Express. 16 August 2002’, Theatre Record, 22.9 (2002), p. 1052.

John Thaxter, ‘What's On. 14 August 2002’, Theatre Record, 22.9 (2002), p. 551.

Nicholas Wright, ‘Programme Note’Programme Vincent in Brixton (London: National Theatre), p. 5.

Hayden White, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973).

Alaistair Macauly, ‘Financial Times. 7 August 2002’, Theatre Record, 22.16 (2002), pp. 1050–1 (p. 1051).

Kate Stratton, ‘Time Out. 14 August 2002’, Theatre Record, 22.16 (2002), p. 1051.

‘Does Wright really think that this is the way the mind of a great artist works? Surely, the process is more complicated than that? I suspect he hasn't really given the matter much thought and that these moments are simply stuck in so that the audience can go “Ah, ah” when they occur’. (Toby Young, ‘Spectator. 11 May 2002’, Theatre Record, 22.9 [2002], p. 551.)

Charles Spencer, ‘Daily Telegraph. 2 May 2002’, Theatre Record, 22.9 (2002), p. 548.

Gus Gallagher in correspondence with U. Canton, (unpublished, 2004).

Harben, Twentieth-Century English History Plays, p. 253.

Gupta, Gladiator Games, p. 32.

Ibid., pp. 78–9.

Ibid., p. 7 [italics Ursula Canton].

Lyn Gardner, ‘Write about an arranged marriage? No way!’, Guardian, 25 July 2006.

Lizzie Loveridge, ‘Curtain Up London Review Gladiator Games’ (2005). <http://www.curtainup.com/gladiatorgames.html> [accessed 8 January 2006].

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), p. 15.

Ibid., p. 15.

Ibid., p. 53.

Ronen, Possible Worlds in Literary Theory, p. 24.

Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism, p. 231.

In this context it is interesting to note that many documentary plays are published by writers who refer to themselves as editors on the theatre programme or the published script and whose background is indeed in journalism; cf. for example Richard Norton-Taylor's repeated collaboration with Tricycle Theatre, as well as Victoria Brittain's involvement in Guantanamo.

John Highfield, ‘Gladiator Games’. The Stage. <http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/10178/gladiator-games> [accessed 08 January 2006].

All quotations from Ursula Canton, ‘Interviews with Student Spectators of Vincent in Brixton’ (unpublished, 2004).

Michael Frayn, ‘Copenhagen Revisited’, New York Review of Books, 49.5 (2002), pp. 22–24, and Michael Frayn, ‘Author's Note’, in Programme Copenhagen, ed. by the Royal National Theatre (1998).