The ‘Broken Tradition’ of Documentary Theatre and Its Continued Powers of Endurance

Abstract

In 1986 Richard Stourac and Kathleen McCreery drew attention to a ‘broken tradition’ of theatre practice (p. xiii). They were referring to those forms of theatre favoured by working-class groups between the two World Wars, forms that included documentary theatre as a ‘weapon’ in the revolutionaries’ theatrical arsenal. Their eloquently paradoxical phrase encapsulates the history of documentary theatre wherever and whenever it manifests itself. Practitioners almost always have to learn again techniques that seldom get passed on directly. The resultant discontinuity contrasts sharply with the continuity of the tradition of stage naturalism that typifies mainstream Western thea-tre. Modifying itself seemingly effortlessly, naturalism sails on through crisis after crisis. Emphasising the individual against the collective, as mainstream theatre does at primary levels of composition, production and reception, it has a built-in advantage over other forms. However, the rhizomic nature of alternative forms allows for different kinds of flowerings — recoverable, like the past itself, by effort of will and in cir-cumstances of necessity.