Acting with Facts: Actors Performing the Real in British Theatre and Television Production since 1990 (original) (raw)

Acting with Facts: Actors Performing the Real in British Theatre and Television Production since 1990

This document describes a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant AH/E509592/1) that ran from October 2007 until September 2010. It was based in the department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. Dr Derek Paget led the research, assisted by Professor Jonathan Bignell and Professor Lib Taylor, with Dr Heather Sutherland as the project’s Postdoctoral Researcher. The project set out to examine the premise that political change domestically and internationally since 1990 has contributed to a greater prominence in British stage and screen culture for the docudrama. We chose to interview actors who had performed in docudrama in order to assess their contribution. In theatre, we researched Documentary Theatre's substantial revival in the forms of the 'Verbatim' and 'Tribunal' theatre plays produced at (for example) the Royal Court and the Tricycle Theatres. The accent on testimony and witness statement evident in theatre forms has also manifested itself in television, where blending of genres has reshaped conventions of documentary and drama forms and created new hybrids that emphasise the personal (e.g. docusoap, Reality TV, documusical). The 'Historical-Event' TV docudrama also provided a focus for study. In film, synergy between the film and television industries has led to an increased presence of docudramatic forms. Films have been 'dual purposed' for release to both small and large screens, and workers in both industries (including actors) routinely move between them. Film form has gone beyond the 'biopic', with films that owe much to television docudrama (incorporating, for example, more archive footage and graphical information). On stage and screen, the use of facts in drama has been an important part of a general media response to political and social change. Docudrama has become part of a cultural response to greater national and global uncertainty.