Staging the Democratic Deficit: Or, Three Uses of the Interview

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Notes

1. David Aaronovitch, ‘A Nation Divided: Tea or Claret?’, The Times, 20 April 2010 <http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/stage/theatre/article2482389.ece> [accessed 26 October 2014].

2. Laura Wade, Posh, (London: Oberon, 2010): first performed at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, London, 9 April 2010, dir. by Lyndsey Turner; transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre, 11 May 2012.

3. Look Left Look Right Theatre Company, Counted: first performed at County Hall, London, April 2010, devised by Steve Bottoms, Ben Freedman, and Mimi Poskitt.

4. Aaronovitch, ‘A Nation Divided’.

5. The Riot Club, dir. by Lone Scherfig (Universal Pictures International, 2014).

6. Of the 29 members of Prime Minister David Cameron’s first cabinet, appointed following the 2010 election, 23 had estimated assets worth more than £1 million. See Glen Owen, ‘The Coalition of Millionaires’, Daily Mail, 23 May 2010 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1280554/The-coalition-millionaires-23-29-member-new-cabinet-worth-1m–Lib-Dems-just-wealthy-Tories.html> [accessed 27 November 2014].

7. Michael Billington, ‘Theatre: Counted?’, Guardian, 21 April 2010, p. 40.

8. See Brenda Hollweg’s essay in this issue for an overview account of ‘The Road to Voting’ project, (pp. 177–89).

9. Stephen Coleman and Vanalyne Green, The Road to Voting: Project Outline, unpublished document for internal circulation at the University of Leeds, 2007.

10. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).

11. Will Hammond and Dan Steward, Verbatim Verbatim (London: Oberon, 2008), p. 10.

12. Stephen Bottoms, ‘Putting the Document into Documentary: An Unwelcome Corrective?’, The Drama Review, 50.3 (Fall 2006), 56–68 (p. 57).

13. John Law and John Urry, ‘Enacting the Social’, Economy and Society, 33 (February 2005), 390–410 (p. 392).

14. Les Back, The Art of Listening (Oxford: Berg, 2007), p. 17.

15. There have, of course, been some notable exceptions to this ‘editing out’ of the interviewer. Gregory Burke’s Black Watch (National Theatre of Scotland, 2006) features a writer figure speaking to members of the Scottish regiment, in an echo of Burke’s own research process for the play, although these scenes are dramatised and no claim is made to any strictly ‘verbatim’ status for the dialogue. More recently, Alecky Blythe staged herself as an interviewer on the streets during the 2011 London riots, in her verbatim play Little Revolution (Almeida, 2014).

16. David Edgar, ‘Doc and Dram’, The Guardian, 27 September 2008. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/sep/27/theatre.davidedgar> [accessed 27 October 2014].

17. Stephen Coleman, How Voters Feel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 103.

18. Coleman, How Voters Feel, p. 94.

19. Ibid., p. 100.

20. See Nina Eliasoph, ‘Political Culture and the Presentation of a Political Self’, Theory and Society, 19 (August 1990) 465–94.

21. Coleman, How Voters Feel, p. 101.

22. Anna Deavere Smith, Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines (New York: Random House, 2000), pp. 51, 53.

23. Ben Freedman, unpublished interview with author, 14 October 2012, Leeds.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. John Thaxter, ‘Reviews: Yesterday was a Weird Day’, Stage, 13 February 2006 <http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/11534/yesterday-was-a-weird-day> [accessed 27 October 2014].

27. Look Left, Look Right, The Caravan, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, August 2008.

28. Freedman, unpublished interview.

29. Ibid.

30. Shadd Maruna, Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Build Their Lives (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2001), p. 51.

31. Freedman, unpublished interview.

32. Stephen Coleman, quote excerpted from unpublished interviews with author, October 2009–March 2010.

33. Valentina Cardo, unpublished interview with author, January 2010.

34. Coleman, unpublished interviews.

35. Coleman, How Voters Feel, p. 104.

36. Ibid.

37. Coleman, unpublished interviews.

38. Ibid.

39. Five years on, of course, it is the UK Independence Party (UKIP) – less obviously tarnished with overt racism – that has become the more acceptable recourse for such disaffected voters.

40. Freedman, unpublished interview.

41. Ibid.

42. Hammond and Steward, Verbatim Verbatim, p. 10.

43. Freedman, unpublished interview.

44. Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. by Gregory Elliott (London & New York: Verso, 2009), p. 16.

45. Ibid, p. 17.

46. Freedman, unpublished interview.

47. Ibid.