Rustom Bharucha positions himself as a dramaturg, troubleshooting and problematizing diverse understandings and practices of ‘documentary theatre’. Through a series of disjunctive reflections followed by questions, he juxtaposes theoretical truisms and assumptions on what constitutes the ‘documentary’ in relation to the immediacies and exigencies of practice. Instead of definitions and explanations, he presents specific problems which test the ‘what’, the ‘why’, and the ‘how’ of documentary theatre practice, teasing out its uncertainties and ethical limitations against the grain of its assumed objectivity and relevance. Drawing on key tropes in documentary theatre discourse relating to authenticity, evidence, ‘experts of the everyday’ (Rimini Protokoll), reportage, the testimonial, and re-enactments, the talk concludes with questions relating to the challenge of documentary theatre in confronting the overwhelming performativity of India’s political culture today. How may we shift the terms of discourse to arrive at new epistemologies and techniques of the documentary, embedded in a re-envisioning of the political?
Rustom Bharucha positions himself as a dramaturg, troubleshooting and problematizing diverse understandings and practices of ‘documentary theatre’. Through a series of disjunctive reflections followed by questions, he juxtaposes theoretical truisms and assumptions on what constitutes the ‘documentary’ in relation to the immediacies and exigencies of practice. Instead of definitions and explanations, he presents specific problems which test the ‘what’, the ‘why’, and the ‘how’ of documentary theatre practice, teasing out its uncertainties and ethical limitations against the grain of its assumed objectivity and relevance. Drawing on key tropes in documentary theatre discourse relating to authenticity, evidence, ‘experts of the everyday’ (Rimini Protokoll), reportage, the testimonial, and re-enactments, the talk concludes with questions relating to the challenge of documentary theatre in confronting the overwhelming performativity of India’s political culture today. How may we shift the terms of discourse to arrive at new epistemologies and techniques of the documentary, embedded in a re-envisioning of the political?