Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

272 Chapter 10 Global Theatre Today
Vin Knight and Mike Iveson perform not a written
playscript but the documents and oral arguments—
which appear on the back wall of the stage—of an
actual 1991 Supreme Court case that concerned a
group of go-go dancers performing in the nude.
Arguendo (Latin for “for the sake of arguing”) is
the title of this 2013 verbatim theatre production
by Elevator Repair Service at the New York Public
Theatre. © Joan Marcus
the trial but devolves into a spectacle of dancing,
stripteases, and precisely coordinated movements. As
a result, the play demonstrates the very subject under
debate in the case.
• My Name Is Rachel Corrie, edited and compiled
by Alan Rickman, draws from the diaries and
e-mail messages of American peace activist
Corrie, who died in Gaza in 2003 while trying
to stop an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing a
Palestinian home. Despite its success at London’s
Royal Court Theatre in 2005, its scheduled
New York opening was “postponed” (in effect
canceled) the following year in deference to
reactions from persons opposed to the play’s
theme. Nonetheless, the play has been performed
regionally and off-off-Broadway.
• Stuff Happens, by celebrated British playwright
David Hare, deals with the creation of the British-
American coalition during the buildup to the Iraq
War; the play’s title comes from U.S. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s response, during a
press conference, to a question about the looting of
Baghdad.
• Sin, a Cardinal Deposed was created by playwright
Michael Murphy from a thousand pages of court
deposition by Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law,
plus letters and public documents from priests,
doctors, and sexual-abuse victims. The verbatim
script was performed by six actors of the Bailiwick
Theatre in Chicago in 2004 to great—and often
tearful—acclaim.
• Black Watch was compiled by Gregory Burke from
intensely gripping verbatim interviews he conducted
with soldiers from Scotland’s 72nd (“Black Watch”)
regiment after their return from the war in Iraq.
Premiered by the National Theatre of Scotland in
2006, it won four Olivier Awards and has since
toured the world.
A DANGEROUS THEATRE
A theatre that draws directly from today’s news, demonstrates
openness and diversity, and is experimental and
macaronic, is oftentimes shocking as well. And so today’s
theatre is frequently a dangerous one.
The nudity and sensory assault of contemporary theatre
stagings no longer cause much protest. Audiences
in the twenty-first century generally take these in stride.
The 2009 Broadway revival of Hair, rather than shock
audiences, proved a mainstream hit, with most of the
audience considering its famous full-cast frontal nudity
tableau ending the first act more charming than challenging.
Danger in today’s theatre is more apt to come
from depictions of violence. Of course, the theatre has
long featured acts of violence. Ancient Greek tragedies
often reached their climaxes in the aftermath of bloody
acts: Oedipus Rex gouges his eyes out, Medea kills
her children, Clytemnestra murders her husband while
he bathes. Today our theatre has returned to depicting
these primal acts of violence, filtered through
our contemporary anxieties surrounding war, terror,
and the aggressive oppression of women and minorities.
A recent series of plays by Lucy Thurber in 2013,