DOCUMENTARY THEATRE: PEDAGOGUE AND HEALER WITH THEIR VOICES RAISED by Kathryn M. Morris A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida May 2014 © Copyright Kathryn M. Morris 2014 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee members, Dr. Richard Gamble, Professor Thomas Atkins, Dr. Patricia Kollander, and Dr. Patricia Liehr; your guidance and support has been invaluable. To my chair, Dr. Gamble, the next cup of coffee is on me. A big thank you to the American and Japanese nursing research team: Dr. Patricia Liehr, Dr. Lisa Marie Wands, Dr. Ryutaro Takahashi, Dr. Mio Ito, and Ms. Chie Nishimura; your commitment to the survivors’ stories has been an act of love. Thank you for recognizing documentary theatre as vehicle with which to share their testimonies. I also would like to thank Mr. Andrew Binder of FAU’s College of Education for his aesthetic vision in creating a DVD presentation to further disseminate the survivors’ stories. I wish you the very best. Thank you to my director, stage-manager, and all actors (past and future) of the With Their Voices Raised documentary. I applaud your enthusiasm and hard work. It was much appreciated. Thank you to all in the Florida Atlantic University Theatre and Dance department and to Ms. Gabby Denier and Dr. Michael Horswell of the Comparative Studies program for your continued support and encouragement. I also would like to thank my editor and friend Stefanie Gapinski, for her ‘keen eye’ during the dissertation process. iv Finally, thank you to my family for your unconditional love, understanding, and support. I wish you all a thousand paper cranes. v ABSTRACT Author: Kathryn M. Morris Title: Documentary Theatre: Pedagogue and Healer With Their Voices Raised Institution: Florida Atlantic University Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Richard Gamble Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Year: 2014 The beginning of the new millennium finds documentary theatre serving as teacher and “healer” to those suffering and in need. By providing a thought provoking awareness of the “other,” it offers a unique lens with which to examine the socio-political similarities and differences between various cultures and ethnicities in order to promote intercultural understanding. Documentary is also used by teachers, therapists, and researchers as a tool for healing. By sharing personal stories of trauma and illness with others who are experiencing similar difficulties, emotional pains are alleviated and fears are assuaged. Documentary theatre has expanded in definition from the “epic dramas” of German playwrights Erwin Piscator and Bertholt Brecht during the height of the German Weimar Republic to the recent “verbatim” scripts of playwrights such as Anna Deveare Smith, Emily Mann, and Robin Soans. vi The dramaturgical duties of the playwright along with the participatory role of the audience have grown in complexity. In verbatim documentary the playwright must straddle a fine line between educating and entertaining while remaining faithful to the words of the respondents as well as to the context in which they were received. The audience, by responding to questionnaires and by engaging in talk-back sessions, plays a pivotal role in production. Documentary serves as an important vehicle for informing and inspiring audiences from all walks of life. In 2010, researchers Dr. Patricia Liehr of the Christine E. Lynn School of Nursing at Florida Atlantic University and Dr. Ryutaro Takahashi, Vice Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, approached me to create a documentary based on their combined interviews of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima survivors. The resultant script, With Their Voices Raised, is included as an appendix to this dissertation as an example of the documentary genre and its unique capacity for research dissemination. With Their Voices Raised not only conveys the memories and fears of the survivors, but in its conclusion reveals how these victims of war have elected to live their lives in a quest for peace- choosing “hope over hate” in a shared world. vii DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this manuscript to the Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima survivors, who so generously shared their stories. May we never forget their bravery and forever keep their message of peace in our hearts. DOCUMENTARY THEATRE: PEDAGOGUE AND HEALER WITH THEIR VOICES RAISED LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ xii LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... xiii INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 PART I. LESSONS IN THE HISTORY, DRAMATURGY, AND REMEDIAL POWER OF THE DOCUMENTARY GENRE ................................................................. 8 Chapter 1. Documentary Theatre: Evolution from Drama to Verbatim ................. 8 Searching for the ‘Real” on the World Stage .............................................. 9 Erwin Piscator and Bertholt Brecht’s Epic Theatre .................................. 15 Erwin Piscator (1893-1966) ...................................................................... 17 Bertholt Brecht (1898-1956) ..................................................................... 23 Hallie Flanagan (1890-1936): The Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspapers ............................................................................................... 30 Triple-A Plowed Under (1936) ................................................................. 39 Power (1937) ............................................................................................ 43 Martin Duberman (1930-) ......................................................................... 52 In White America (1963) ........................................................................... 60 Anna Deveare Smith (1950-) .................................................................... 69 Fires in the Mirror (1991) ........................................................................ 72 Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994) .......................................................... 76 viii Conclusion ................................................................................................ 82 Chapter 2. Dramaturgical Duties and Audience Responsibilities ......................... 83 Aristotle’s Poetics (330 B.C.) ................................................................... 85 Gotthold Ephriam Lessing (1729-1781) ................................................... 87 Erwin Piscator and Bertholt Brecht .......................................................... 93 Rolf Hochhuth (1931-), Heinar Kipphardt (1922-1982), and Peter Weiss (1916-1982) .................................................................................... 98 Unities of Documentary .......................................................................... 104 Semiotics ................................................................................................. 106 Dramaturgical Responsibility ................................................................. 109 Word Power ............................................................................................ 110 Evoking the Senses ................................................................................. 117 The Production Dramaturg ..................................................................... 119 Audience Participation ............................................................................ 122 Conclusion: Dramaturgy in the New Millennium .................................. 129 Chapter 3. Didactic and Restorative Powers of the Documentary Genre ........... 134 Augusto Boal (1931-2009) ..................................................................... 137 Improving Cognition by Engaging the Senses ........................................ 143 Theatre Strategies for Expanding Classroom Learning .......................... 145 Storytelling in the Classroom: A Therapeutic Process ........................... 154 Standing Tall (2002) ............................................................................... 157 Stories beyond the Classroom Setting .................................................... 159 Empathy and Understanding in a Shared World ..................................... 162 ix Addressing Social, Political, and Intercultural Issues through Performance ............................................................................................ 165 Greensboro: A Requiem (1996) by Emily Mann .................................... 169 The Arab-Israeli Cookbook (2004) by Robin Soans ............................... 172 The Laramie Project (2006) by Moises Kaufmann ................................ 174 Theatre and Therapy: Healing Individuals and Community ................... 177 Documentary: An Operative Tool for Research Dissemination ............. 182 Conclusion: What Next? ......................................................................... 185 PART II. WITH THEIR VOICES RAISED: ENHANCING HISTORY THROUGH DOCUMENTARY IN AN EFFORT TO PROMOTE PEACE ..................................... 188 Chapter 4. The Power of Personal Testimony in History and Documentary Theatre ...............................................................................................................