The Memory Marketplace

Witnessing Pain in Contemporary Irish and International Theatre

Emilie Pine

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780253054982
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire en théâtre

What happens when cultural memory becomes a commodity? Who owns the memory? In The Memory Marketplace, Emilie Pine explores how memory is performed both in Ireland and abroad by considering the significant body of contemporary Irish theatre that contends with its own culture and history. Analyzing examples from this realm of theatre, Pine focuses on the idea of witnesses, both as performers on stage and as members of the audience. Whose memories are observed in these transactions, and how and why do performances prioritize some memories over others? What does it mean to create, rehearse, perform, and purchase the theatricalization of memory? The Memory Marketplace shows this transaction to be particularly fraught in the theatricalization of traumatic moments of cultural upheaval, such as the child sexual abuse scandal in Ireland. In these performances, the role of empathy becomes key within the marketplace dynamic, and Pine argues that this empathy shapes the kinds of witnesses created. The complexities and nuances of this exchange—subject and witness, spectator and performer, consumer and commodified—provide a deeper understanding of the crucial role theatre plays in shaping public understanding of trauma, memory, and history.

ONE

TELL THEM THAT YOU SAW US

Witnessing Docu-verbatim Memory

SOCIAL AND MNEMONIC CAPITAL ARE intimately linked. This chapter considers this statement in relation to the emergence of previously unspeakable memories into the marketplace as the social capital of marginalized groups begins to shift. These shifts are inextricably linked to cultural representation, and this chapter analyzes how theatrical gatekeepers use their influence within the cultural marketplace to raise both the memory and social capital of formerly powerless stakeholders—the victims of child abuse, sexual violence, and murder—through the form of docu-verbatim work, in order to create a more ethically balanced culture. Continuing the focus on the audience as a consumer in this dynamic, however, the chapter also highlights the risks inherent in marketing painful memory. Indeed, docu-verbatim theatre’s construction of the audience as witnesses creates a product and brand that generates memory capital for the firsthand witness, but whose ultimate dividend is the accrual of moral capital by the audience. As Roberta Sassatelli argues, “a growing variety of discourses, both within the marketplace and outside it, in politics and civil society, is calling into being the ‘consumer’ not only as an active subject but also, and above all, as a moral and political subject.”¹ This chapter argues that docu-verbatim theatre is one such discourse, which not only calls into being, but depends on the idea of the moral consumer and audience-as-witness. But it also argues that the outcomes of this positioning have not yet been sufficiently analyzed in relation to how docu-verbatim theatre’s use of trauma as a catalyst for witnessing—what Ann Cvetkovich has called “an archive of feelings”—creates a consumer commodity out of painful memory.² The chapter explores the tension between witnessing and shame, the interventionist role of biased mediation, the use of intolerable images, and the institutionalization of memory capital in order to engage with the fraught question of how theatre stages difficult histories.

DOCU-VERBATIM

Docu-verbatim theatre is not the best known form of Irish, or indeed international, theatre. But it is a genre increasing both its market share and its symbolic impact, and as such urgently requires analysis as an “alternative product,” a commodity that, as defined by Sassatelli, embodies “a critical dialogue with many aspects of commoditization as we know it.”³ In other words, this is a form of theatre that makes visible the cycle of production, distribution, and consumption through foregrounding the mechanisms of theatre-making and witnessing and highlighting the role of theatre as a joint site of production and consumption.

Docu-verbatim, my blended term designed to encompass documentary (based on documents) and verbatim (word-for-word) theatre styles, has experienced a recent market resurgence, its popularity broadly a response to the form’s attempt to represent some of the ethical crises of recent decades.⁴ It may be understood as a response to what Cvetkovich has defined as the need for nonmainstream social groups, without cultural capital, to have their memories and experiences represented through nonmainstream forms of performance, including “new genres of expression, such as testimony, and new forms of monuments, rituals, and performances that can call into being collective witnesses and publics.”⁵ Docu-verbatim is thus a “new form of . . . ritual” that responds to the consumer demand for art to react to crisis and to make the intricacies of those crises available, via a combined presentation of the relevant facts and an agreed message. Its recent popularity represents, as Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson put it, “a remarkable mobilisation and proliferation.”⁶ While many docu-verbatim plays are based on material (such as court transcripts) that is already publicly available, the form’s advantage is its mobilization of this information into a more accessible and performative medium. This action is attractive to a cultural and social marketplace that is constantly flooded with information, as these plays promise to distill what is important in a consumer-friendly format. In one sense, then, docu-verbatim’s contemporary market success is based not only on its seeming response to ethical crises, but to a crisis of knowing—or rather, a feeling of not-knowing. As Carol Martin argues, docu-verbatim “both acknowledges a positivist faith in empirical reality and underscores an epistemological crisis in knowing truth,” a feeling of crisis that, perhaps, an evening at the theatre can allay.⁷ Insecurity, as any analyst will tell you, is bad for the market—unless, that is, the market can create a brand to simultaneously address and feed off that insecurity.

The “art” of docu-verbatim is to transform complex ethical and social debates into a theatrically powerful moment, harnessing the emotive power of crisis and controversy in order to do so. In championing the disenfranchised, and highlighting abuses of power, these plays derive their edge from challenging the status quo and saying the unsayable. In this sense docu-verbatim theatre goes beyond “holding the mirror up to nature,” instead actively attempting to intervene in the world outside the theatre—the social, cultural, and memory marketplaces. What is particular to this form is its rooting in “the real”; docu-verbatim theatre gives direct access to untold stories of the unheard. I say “gives” and “direct,” with the obvious caveat being that docu-verbatim gives the impression of granting access to authenticity, through what is a highly stylized and highly selective form. We need to consider the dialectic between witnessing the authentic voice and the exigencies of shaping the message; through examining this tension we will see how docu-verbatim theatre negotiates the marketplace, positions the witness within the marketplace, and mediates the witness’s voice in order to create a powerful connection between the witness and the audience, a connection that creates significant cultural, social, and memory capital.⁸ Ultimately, theatre makers who privilege the voice of the unheard work as gatekeepers, who transform not only the cultural but hopefully also the social capital of the person or group whose testimony is being witnessed.

Is consuming docu-verbatim theatre a different experience to consuming fiction theatre? The short answer is yes. While the performers of mainstream fiction theatre relate their narratives to an implied audience, docu-verbatim is generally characterized by a direct address style, which creates an uninterrupted relationship, removing the security of the fourth wall entirely. Though there are obviously theatrical personas being performed in docu-verbatim, many of the “roles” portray real people or, in the case of autoperformance (considered in the next chapter), the “actor” and the “real” person are one and the same. Moreover, the sense that these productions address urgent and moral crises also serves to increase the feeling of consuming something real and important, shifting the audience member toward the role of citizen consumer and audience-witness. Since this genre of performance projects itself differently, it makes sense to consider how the audience may react differently. For example, in watching an actor perform a true story of abuse, is the audience more engaged, more impacted, more affected? If the story of abuse is due at least in part to inequality in social, political, and economic capital, is the audience inspired to leave the theatre and to join a campaign for greater equality? Does the communal nature of hearing this testimony inspire theatre audiences for docu-verbatim shows to situate themselves in a social dynamic whereby each individual sees their responsibility to the collective? Conversely, does the setting of the theatre and the use of theatrical strategies of scripting and mediation work to separate this “reality” from the outside world, thereby preventing the translation of the ethical feelings produced by the play within the theatre into ethical action outside the theatre? Docu-verbatim theatre may create the potential for both collective and individual ethical witnessing, but it does not automatically lead to ethical action outside the theatre, in the larger market.

The Market for Docu-verbatim: The Starving Man

Playwright David Hare said of the appeal of documentary theatre “What is a painting, a painting of a starving man? What is a painting of a corpse? It’s the facts we want. Give us the facts.”⁹ The popularity of docu-verbatim theatre rests on the idea that this form of theatre will “give us the facts.” The veracity of the form is integral to its appeal, yet since one show could never, and we would not want it to, give us all the facts, it must necessarily be selective. Just as a painting is, docu-verbatim theatre is composed, crafted, and framed, an artistic mediation. The facts, however, grant the docu-verbatim play an atmosphere of legitimacy, which in wearing its mediation lightly, seems to offer a refreshingly unswerving contact with its subject: suffering. This may not be the most obviously appealing or popular form; when presented with crises, audiences often crave escapism. Yet the success of London’s Tricycle Theatre, which pioneered tribunal theatre in the UK,¹⁰ and the success of individual artists such as Anna Deveare Smith, who has made a career in the US out of her one-woman shows based on verbatim testimony (discussed in chap. 4), illustrates that Hare is right—there is substantial consumer demand for the starving man.

What is it that the fact of the “starving man” gives the audience? In basing itself on archival history or personal, often oral, testimony, the docu-verbatim show derives a value from its proximity to “the thing itself.” The actor portraying the firsthand witness, using their words, can declare “I was there” and the audience can declare “I was there to witness the person who experienced this,” seeming to put the primary and secondary witnesses into a new relationship.¹¹ There is a certain frisson attached to this proximity and also a potential visceral thrill for the audience in coming close to suffering, a thrill that is made safe by the environs of the theatre. Though the subject matter may be violence and its consequences, the staging of docu-verbatim is nonviolent and it may be perceived indeed as an alternative for audiences who want a dose of reality but do not desire the confrontation of in-yer-face theatre. There is also a clarity offered by docu-verbatim theatre, based on its proximity to, but difference from, the archive or event. The process of docu-verbatim sifts the “important” facts from the irrelevant or messy, creating a more straightforward narrative and message with which audiences can engage. As Martin has described it, “theatre of the real participates in how we come to know and understand what has happened.”¹² It may be that docu-verbatim shows play to the converted, but there is also the possibility that the docu-verbatim show can change minds too. In being presented with different sides of the debate, or being granted access to the verbatim words of the original witness, the audience member may be newly convinced (or reconvinced) of the case that is under presentation. And this highlights a feature of docu-verbatim: that it so often has a case to present, which I would summarize as the case to champion the disenfranchised or otherwise voiceless.

In championing the disenfranchised, docu-verbatim theatre promises to create a platform for the many voices that otherwise have no social capital and thus no access to the theatre, or to the cultural marketplace in general. This promise is appealing to an audience, in the same way that “untold stories” have a novelty and discovery value. The promise is also, of course, appealing to those whose stories are to be dramatized as it offers the potential to amplify their voice in an otherwise loud and crowded marketplace. Unlike the television documentary, there is no screen or commercial break to come between the spectator and the subject (though the screen may, in fact, be a welcome diversion for audiences averse to such a close identification). And, finally, in selecting one story to tell—or personalizing through drawing out, however basically, “characters” from the messiness of all the facts—the docu-verbatim show offers the promise not only of making the archive or experience intelligible, but knowable. In this way, docu-verbatim shows promise audiences that in the process of witnessing the production, they will gain an authority over the subject matter and attain a sense of ownership over an archive or experience that did not, initially, belong to them. This promise is a potentially valuable commodity.

If these are some of the reasons why audiences buy a ticket to hear the facts or to see “the thing itself,” then what happens once they are in the theatre? As I discuss in detail below in relation to specific productions, there are various answers to this question. As mentioned, there is the possibility that audiences can be inspired (or not) by the production to act as witnesses themselves in the marketplace outside the theatre. But there are multiple other dimensions to the relationship between the docu-verbatim stage and the auditorium. The agency of the audience is never an easy question to consider, but it is possible to see how productions themselves hope to construct and affect that agency. Ownership of, or authority on, an experience or event is one way that docu-verbatim can create a sense of agency for an audience. Crucially, however, not all perspectives on that experience or event are valued equally within the doc...