Introduction: Dramaturgy of the Real

Abstract

Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage is a rendezvous with the ways in which the “real,” a category that is both asserted and challenged in relation to claims of verisimilitude and truth, is being theatricalized on world stages in the twenty-first century. Theatre and performance that engages the real participates in the larger cultural obsession with capturing the “real” for consumption even as what we understand as real is continually revised and reinvented. Theatre of the real, also known as documentary theatre as well as docudrama, verbatim theatre, reality-based theatre, theatre of witness, tribunal theatre, nonfiction theatre, and theatre of fact, has long been important for the subjects it presents. More recent dramaturgical innovations in the ways texts are created and productions are staged sheds light on the ways theatre can form and be formed by contemporary cultural discourses about the real both on stage and off. Today’s most provocative personal, political, historical, and virtual theatre of the real embraces the cultural and technological changes that are reforming us globally and breaks away from the conservative and conventional dramaturgy of realism that was so much a part of documentary theatre in the late twentieth century. Aesthetically conservative documentary theatre, many times infused with leftist politics, continues today. Alongside it, and to some degree overtaking it, is an emerging theatre of the real that directly addresses the global condition of troubled epistemologies about truth, authenticity and reality. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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