Читать книгу No White Picket Fence - Robin C. Whittaker - Страница 10

In late 2015, Sue asked to meet with Dr. Robin C. Whittaker, associate professor and drama advisor in St. Thomas’s Department of English and artistic producer for Theatre St. Thomas. After describing the research study she had undertaken, Sue asked Robin how this project might be developed further, how the learnings might be lifted from the written page into a more powerful articulation of participants’ complex lived experiences. Robin replied simply, “Verbatim theatre and Theatre St. Thomas.” And with that statement, an unexpected and exhilarating collaboration began.

Verbatim theatre is a form of documentary drama in which the entirety of the dialogue is drawn word-for-word from the voices of real people, in this case from excerpts drawn from the interviews that Sue conducted with the ten women whose stories we hear in No White Picket Fence. Unlike traditional realism, the form allowed Robin and Sue to keep alive multiple journeys without reducing them to one story, one heroine, or one impression. No two “foster kids” – no two “youth in care” – are the same. Ever.

Sue and Robin agreed that TST was ideal for this sort of project. Students at St. Thomas are socially conscious to a fault, with an unflinching rehearsal ethic. And like Solo Chicken Productions / TST’s community-engaged play Rabbit-Town (2014), No White Picket Fence educates. It also seeks to advocate.

Before any steps could be taken to advance what Robin and Sue had envisioned, an amendment to the research project required approval by the university’s Research Ethics Board. Research participants were then contacted to explain the addition to the project and invited to participate in this component by allowing the use of their interviews for the creation of the script. All ten participants gave their consent.