Early on in the process, we all agreed that a particular point of interest was verbatim, a fascinating ‘form of documentary theatre which is based on the spoken words of real people’ (Drama Online, 2015). We wanted to interview people with a range of ages, taking into consideration people from different eras and cultures and how their views on growing up and adulthood varied. This then later developed into collecting stories finding stories from people which all fit into our five sections or chapters of Shoes to Fill. These five chapters were the stereotypical milestones in one’s life, the parts of life that a person should “usually” conform to: growing up, going to university or finding a job, finding “the one”, becoming a parent and growing old.
We interviewed family and friends and then selected stories that were relevant to this performance structure and they were placed into the appropriate chapters: a story from an older lady speaking about her desire to be a nurse from a young age and a recorded interview from a young man who works with his father both fitted nicely into the chapter about whether to choose to go to university or get a job. In the finding “the one” section, we selected an interview from a Sikh woman who was able to escape the threat of a forced marriage and the obstacles she overcame and another from a senior citizen remembering how she met her late husband and that they remained together even though they were followers of conflicting religions. The following fit into the becoming a parent section: a story from a Bosnian man who unexpectedly became a father and was later able to get his daughter out of a war-torn country and a selection about the trials and joys of becoming a parent and lastly one about a man who became part of an already formed family with three grown up children and his journey to being accepted as one of them.
I left a couple of the verbatim pieces alone such as the nurse and the forced marriage ones as they were taken straight from recorded interviews and were not sent to us in written form. Some of the others had grammatical issues that in places did not work so I edited them slightly, removing parts that did not make sense – see the two attached documents which clearly show the original paragraphs and the final edited ones that featured in our piece. I also chose to mostly leave the Bosnia scene as it was decided that it would help create a sense of character, allowing a natural accent to come through the language and not a potentially stereotypical or offensive one created by the actors.
Nurse Verbatim – length only edited
Forced Marriage Verbatim – barely edited
Original Verbatim – Parenthood
Parenthood Verbatim Edited (in final)
Bosnia Verbatim – barely edited
Hannah.
*The above attachments were added at a later date now that they are complete as well as the details regarding them in the above blog – this date shown was when they were were decided upon.*
Works Cited
Drama Online (2015) Verbatim theatre. [online] UK: Bloomsbury. Available from http://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/genres/verbatim-theatre-iid-2551 [Accessed 19 April 2015].