Nonfiction Theater
Wednesday, 10 February 2021, 16:00-18:00 GMT
Online session
My main question is whether there are genres of scripts that are fiction, and genres that are nonfiction, the way documentary is a kind of nonfiction film and biography a kind of nonfiction literature. I argue that Verbatim Theater qualifies, because it presents evidence in support of a thesis (or so audiences can draw their own conclusions), and is not just a reenactment of or acting out of a series of events like a docudrama. [The paper is a revised version of Susan Feagin’s 2020 American Society for Aesthetics Presidential Address, and is forthcoming in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.]