Naturalism

The prompt question for this week asks two things::

1.  Distinguish between the show that you just enjoyed (made you laugh, cry, upset, or was entertaining, etc..) from a production that really informed or convinced you of something True.
2.  Is there a difference between performances that offer some kind of (new or newly clarified) truth versus performances that strive for documentary “verbatim” or naturalistic reality?

For Naturalism, truthfulness in the theater is about creating the illusion of reality with totally authentic and naturalistic stage pictures. Pickering and Thompson claim that Naturalists took three related ideas to create their doctrine: "scientific enquiry, materialism and pictorial realism." They go on to say that it was perhaps more particularly, "the invention of photography to present images of life that were more 'truthful' and accurate than had ever been seen before, which contributed significantly to the passion for visual realism." As Joe points out, Pickering and Thompson claim that contemporary documentary theater is a legacy of Naturalism. The goal is to present events objectively, "with the exact word spoken without emphasis, quite naturally."

This connection between Naturalism and Documentary theater is interesting in light of our experience last fall with Spill. Spill was a documentary style play with elements of verbatim reality and yet, it was also highly theatrical. Instead of merely having the actors recite the testimonies of the survivors of the Deepwater Horizon, the actors engaged in a choreographed sequences with movement, lighting, projection and sound to give the audience an experience of this tragedy.

Drawing primarily from my experience with this play I can say yes, there is difference between performances that offer some kind of clarified truth and those that strive for "verbatim" reality. Tectonic Theatre operates under a larger notion of truth than the pictorial realism of Naturalism. For example in Spill, truth can be conveyed symbolically - (I'm thinking in particular of the rig explosion scene).

A larger question (which I don't have the energy to explore right now) concerns the concept of truth. I would argue that Naturalism's concept of truth is reductionist and ultimately dangerous to true function of theatre. We can perhaps discuss this further when we get to Artaud.