Verbatim Theatre
- Verbatim theatre is a form of documented theatre in which plays are constructed from the precise words spoken by people interviewed about a particular event or topic. – Google Definition
- Alecky Blythe's Little Revolution is a verbatim-theatre play about the London Riots, a series of related disturbances, including widespread looting and arson, that took place in several London boroughs (as well as in other towns and cities in England) in August 2011.
- It was first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 26 August 2014.
- The play was created and performed using the verbatim-theatre techniques developed by Blythe with her company Recorded Delivery.
- It is composed entirely of material drawn from recordings made by Blythe, who personally interviewed many of the participants and witnesses of the riots. Those conversations, in edited form, are then reproduced by actors on stage.
- The script is a transcription of the final selection of material, although in rehearsal and performance the actors work from an in-ear audio feed to ensure that the original conversations are replicated with meticulous verisimilitude.
- Some names of interviewees have been changed
- The play focuses on responses to the riots within an area of Hackney in east London.
- Blythe puts herself into the story and shows how she was tangentially caught up in the riots as they happened: in one episode, a group of looters catch her taking pictures and ask to inspect her camera before moving on.
-The main focus is on the response of two disparate groups in the aftermath of events. Middle-class residents who live around Clapton Square start a fund to come to the aid of a looted local shopkeeper and hold a street party to bring people together.
- Female activists on the adjacent, much poorer, Pembury estate start a campaign against the scapegoating of young people, stop-and-search police tactics and the social inequalities at the heart of the problem.
- The Almeida Theatre premiere was directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins with a set designed by Ian MacNeil.
- The main cast, which included Roni Ancona, Lloyd Hutchinson, Imogen Stubbs, Rufus Wright and Alecky Blythe herself, was joined on stage by a community chorus.
- Another example of verbatim theatre is - The Colour of Justice by Richard Norton-Taylor
Task
Using Recordings we have taken ourselves construct a verbatim scene
- Reading others interactions
o 1 person speaking 2 parts
o 2 people speaking as like the conversation
- Interesting how two people speaking others recordings in which they have never heard before caused natural shock reacting which mimicked the natural way of talking yet when one person said both parts it became more of a performance
- When being recorded knowingly it causes a internal performance to start i.e. better diction and pronunciation yet when done unknowingly realism is more cemented
- Morality of recording people without knowing
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