Documentary Theatre
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Documentary Theatre
Documentary theatre is theatre that uses pre-existing documentary material (such as newspapers, government reports, interviews, journals, and correspondences) as source material for stories about real events and people, frequently without altering the text in performance. The genre typically includes or is referred to as verbatim theatre, investigative theatre, theatre of fact, theatre of witness, autobiographical theatre, and ethnodrama. History Zhivaya Gazeta and Piscator While fact-based drama has been traced back to ancient Greece and Phrynichus' production of ''The Capture of Miletus in'' 492 BC, contemporary documentary theatre is rooted in theatrical practices developed in Eastern Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. In the years after the Russian Revolution, the USSR's Department of Agitation and Propaganda employed theatre troupes known as the Blue Blouses (so called because they wore factory workers' overalls) to stage current events for the largely illiterate population ...
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Document
A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or "lesson": the verb ''doceō'' denotes "to teach". In the past, the word was usually used to denote written proof useful as evidence of a truth or fact. In the computer age, "document" usually denotes a primarily textual computer file, including its structure and format, e.g. fonts, colors, and images. Contemporarily, "document" is not defined by its transmission medium, e.g., paper, given the existence of electronic documents. "Documentation" is distinct because it has more denotations than "document". Documents are also distinguished from " realia", which are three-dimensional objects that would otherwise satisfy the definition of "document" because they memorialize or represent thought; documents are considered more as 2-dimensional rep ...
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Agitprop
Agitprop (; from rus, агитпроп, r=agitpróp, portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in Soviet Russia where it referred to popular media, such as literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms, with an explicitly political message in favor of communism. The term originated in Soviet Russia as a shortened name for the Department for Agitation and Propaganda (, '), which was part of the central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Within the party apparatus, both agitation (work among people who were not Communists) and propaganda (political work among party members) were the responsibility of the ''agitpropotdel'', or APPO. Its head was a member of the MK secretariat, although they ranked second to the head of the ''orgraspredotdel''. Typically Russian agitprop explained the ideology and policies of the Communist Party ...
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Luis Valdez
Luis Miguel Valdez (born June 26, 1940) is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. Regarded as the father of Chicano film and theater, Valdez is best known for his play '' Zoot Suit'', his movie '' La Bamba'', and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community. Biography Early life Valdez was born in Delano, California, to migrant farm worker parents from Mexico, Armeda and Francisco Valdez. The second of 10 children in his family, Valdez began to work the fields at the age of 6. One of his brothers is actor Daniel Valdez. Throughout his childhood, the family moved from harvest to harvest around the central valleys of California. Due to this peripatetic existence, he attended many different schools before the family finally settled in San Jose, California. Education Valdez began school in Stratford, California. His interest in theatre began in the fir ...
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Viet Rock
''Viet Rock'' is a rock musical by Megan Terry that served as inspiration to the musical ''Hair''. A violent denunciation of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, the play was described by its author as a "folk war movie" comprising scenes of disillusionment and protest to the American military presence in Southeast Asia. ''Viet Rock'' is widely considered to be the first rock musical written and performed in the United States, as well as the first protest play about Vietnam. Its premiere also marks the first major theatre production in the United States in which actors left the stage to interact directly with the audience. The play was initially developed in 1965 and 1966 during collaborative workshops at New York City's The Open Theater under the leadership of Joseph Chaikin and Peter Feldman. The company performed improvisations based on accounts of the Vietnam War, and Terry wrote and directed a full-length show based on these improvisations. The music was composed by M ...
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The Open Theater
The Open Theater was an experimental theatre group active from 1963 to 1973. Foundation The Open Theater was founded in New York City by a group of former students of acting teacher Nola Chilton, together with director Joseph Chaikin (formerly of The Living Theatre), Peter Feldman, Megan Terry (often left out of the list of the founders of the Open Theatre due to her being a woman and pioneering in feminist drama, but nonetheless a co-founder of the group), and Sam Shepard. Joseph Chaikin had just left the Living Theater, following the arrest of Julian Beck and Judith Malina for tax evasion. He felt that the Living Theater had become less interested in artistic exploration and experimentation, and more interested in political activism and he felt that actors needed specific training to do the sorts of pieces that the Living Theater did. The group's intent was to continue Chilton's exploration of a "post-method", post-absurd acting technique, by way of a collaborative and ...
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Joseph Chaikin
Joseph Chaikin (September 16, 1935 – June 22, 2003) was an American theatre director, actor, playwright, and pedagogue. Early life and education The youngest of five children, Chaikin was born to a poor Jewish family living in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. At the age of six, he was struck with rheumatic fever, and he continued to suffer from resulting heart complications throughout his life. At the age of ten, he was sent to the National Children's Cardiac Hospital in Florida. It was during this period of isolation he began to organize theater games with other children. After two years in Florida, his health improved, and he was returned to his family, who had moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where his father had taken a job teaching. Chaikin briefly attended Drake University in Iowa, and then returned to New York to begin a career in theater, studying with various acting coaches, while struggling to survive working a variety of jobs. He appeared as a figurant at the M ...
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Free Southern Theater
The Free Southern Theater (FST) was a community theater group founded in 1963 at Tougaloo College in Madison County, Mississippi, by Gilbert Moses, Denise Nicholas, Doris Derby, and John O’Neal. The company manager was Mary Lovelace, later Chair of the Art Department at U.C. Berkeley. The company disbanded in 1980. The Free Southern Theater was a part of the emerging Black Theatre Movement and also closely allied with the civil rights movement—O’Neal and Derby were also directors of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).The Legacy of the Free Southern Theater in New Orleans
Interviews by Rachel Breunlin.
They presented plays by

Martin Duberman
Martin Bauml Duberman (born August 6, 1930) is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist. Duberman is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College, Herbert Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City. Early life Duberman was born into a Jewish family. His father, born in Ukraine, was initially a manual laborer but later founded a successful clothing business that sold uniforms to the government during World War II. His family used the money to move to Mount Vernon, New York and send Martin to the Horace Mann School, an elite private prep school. He would later graduate from Yale College and Harvard University. Activism In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. He was jailed, as a member, for a sit-in protest on the floor of the US Senate. His numerous essays on "The Black Struggle," "The Crisis of the Universities," "American Foreign Policy," and "Gender and Sexual ...
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Nola Chilton
Nola Chilton (12 February 1922 – 8 October 2021) was an American-born Israeli theater director and acting teacher. She was a pioneer of socially engaged theater in Israel. In 2013, Chilton was awarded the Israel Prize for theater. Biography Nola Chilton was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish immigrants from Odessa. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was twelve. Her father was a jewelry engraver and food peddler. She studied acting under Lee Strasberg and worked at the Actors Studio, coaching actors and directing. In 1960, she directed an off-off Broadway production of "Dead End," a radical play about the miserable lives of poverty-stricken young people, in which Dustin Hoffman appeared.One woman s ...
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Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (European part of Turkey), Egypt, Iran, the Levant (including Syria (region), Ash-Shām and Cyprus), Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), and the Socotra Governorate, Socotra Archipelago (a part of Yemen). The term came into widespread usage as a replacement of the term Near East (as opposed to the Far East) beginning in the early 20th century. The term "Middle East" has led to some confusion over its changing definitions, and has been viewed by some to be discriminatory or too Eurocentrism, Eurocentric. The region includes the vast majority of the territories included in the closely associated definition of Western Asia (including Iran), but without the South Caucasus, and additionally includes all of Egypt (not just the Sina ...
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Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea, and shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest. Israel also is bordered by the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively. Tel Aviv is the economic and technological center of the country, while its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally. The land held by present-day Israel witnessed some of the earliest human occupations outside Africa and was among the earliest known sites of agriculture. It was inhabited by the Canaanites ...
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The Investigation (play)
''The Investigation'' (1965) is a play by German playwright Peter Weiss that depicts the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963–1965. It carries the subtitle "Oratorio in 11 Cantos". Weiss was an observer at the trials and developed the play partially from the reports of Bernd Naumann. The work premiered on October 19, 1965 on stages in fourteen West and East German cities and at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. In 1966 the production was presented at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm which featured sets and costumes designed by Weiss's wife, Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, and was directed by Ingmar Bergman. World-Theater Project ''The Investigation'' was originally supposed to be part of a larger "World-Theater Project", which was to follow the structure of Dante Alighieri's ''Divine Comedy''. The three-part theater project was supposed to include the three realms of Paradise, Hell, and Purgatory. In an inversion of Dante's beliefs, ''The Investigation'' was supposed to c ...
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