Verbatim theatre

George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Martin Sheen lead an all-star cast in a powerful portrait of an American civil rights struggle, written by Dustin Lance Black (Milk, J. Edgar) and directed by Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men).

In November 2008, California’s Proposition 8 stripped the freedom to marry away from gay and lesbian couples. Now, two of the nation’s most renowned attorneys, under the auspices of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, have joined forces to challenge Proposition 8 under the United States Constitution. “8” faithfully recreates the progression of the historic 2010 federal trial through original court transcripts and interviews conducted with the plaintiffs, as their stories are brought to life before a live audience. Exclusive interviews include: - Dustin Lance Black and Rob Reiner, playwright and director of “8” - David Boies and Theodore B. Olson, lead attorneys for the plaintiffs challenging Proposition 8 - Backstage interview montage with actors George Clooney, Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, John C. Reilly, Jane Lynch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and James Pickens, Jr. A full-cast performance featuring: Brad Pitt as Chief Judge Vaughn Walker George Clooney as David Boies Martin Sheen as Theodore B. Olson Kevin Bacon as Charles Cooper Jamie Lee Curtis as Sandy Stier Christine Lahti as Kris Perry John C. Reilly as David Blankenhorn Jane Lynch as Maggie Gallagher Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Dr. Ilan Meyer Matthew Morrison as Paul Katami Chris Colfer as Ryan Kendall Yeardley Smith as Dr. Nancy Cott Matt Bomer as Jeff Zarrillo George Takei as Dr. William Tam Rory O’Malley as Dr. Gregory Herek Cleve Jones as Evan Wolfson James Pickens, Jr. as Dr. Gary Segura Jansen Panettiere as Elliott Perry Bridger Zadina as Spencer Perry Vanessa Garcia as Clerk Campbell Brown as Broadcast Journalist Directed by Rob Reiner. Recorded before a live audience at the Wilshire Ebell Theater, Los Angeles on March 3, 2012.

Featuring: Kevin Bacon, Matt Bomer, Campbell Brown, George Clooney, Chris Colfer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Vanessa Garcia, Cleve Jones, Christine Lahti, Jane Lynch, Matthew Morrison, Rory O'Malley, Jansen Panettiere, James Pickens Jr., Brad Pitt, John C. Reilly, Martin Sheen, Yeardley Smith, George Takei, Bridger Zadina

In 1947, witty, outspoken, irascible Dalton Trumbo - the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Roman Holiday and Spartacus - went to prison for defying the House Committee on Un-American Activities and became one of the framed Hollywood Ten. Through his wildly funny and thought-provoking correspondence, Trumbo’s son has created a touching portrait of an extraordinary man.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Jeff Corey, Harry Groener, Christopher Trumbo and Paul Winfield.

Featuring: Jeff Corey, Harry Groener, Christopher Trumbo, Paul Winfield

Culture Clash brashly explores the San Diego-Tijuana region through satire and humor. Bordertown is based upon interviews the trio conducted with more than 100 people from both sides of the border and from every walk of life. Interviewees include right wing talk show host and former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock, Sheriff Bill Kollender, Filipino and Ugandan immigrants, Navy personnel, a high school counselor, a border guard, punk rockers, homeless children, transvestites, and factory workers.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Culture Clash: Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza.

Featuring: Culture Clash: Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, Herbert Siguenza

Alecky Blythe's Cruising is a verbatim-theatre comedy about pensioners going in search of love. It was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in a co-production between the theatre and Recorded Delivery on 7 June 2006.

The play was created and performed using the verbatim-theatre techniques developed by Blythe with her company Recorded Delivery, and first seen in her previous fringe show, Come Out Eli (Arcola Theatre, 2003). The play is composed entirely from recorded interviews, edited and replicated on stage with meticulous verisimilitude.

Maureen is a pensioner in search of passion. After 33 blind dates, 12 cruises and one broken heart, she is still determined to find Mr Right. On the other hand, her best friend Margaret has had no shortage of suitors. Jim, Jack and Geoff were all in the running, but it’s Geoff from Shrewsbury who gets her to the altar. But Maureen has her doubts. Is Margaret just on the rebound and, more importantly, what will happen to her pension?

The Bush Theatre premiere was directed by Matthew Dunster and designed by Anna Bliss Scully. The cast was Jason Barnett, Alecky Blythe, Ian Dunn, Miranda Hart (playing Maureen) and Claire Lichie.

Alecky Blythe's The Girlfriend Experience is a verbatim-theatre play about a seaside brothel that specialises in services to an older clientele. It was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 18 September 2008.

The play was created and performed using the verbatim-theatre techniques developed by Blythe with her company Recorded Delivery, and previously seen in her plays Come Out Eli (Arcola Theatre, 2003) and Cruising (Bush Theatre, 2006). The play is composed entirely from conversations recorded inside an actual brothel, edited and replicated on stage with meticulous verisimilitude. (Some names and place names in the script were changed.)

Tessa has set up a business: a brothel where mature women specialise in offering the ‘Girlfriend Experience’, a surprisingly caring and sympathetic service for their clientele. As the women (Amber, Poppy and Suzie) stoically strive to make a living in a competitive market, their personal lives start to crumble. The quartet reveal their thwarted desires, including a chance at a real monogamous relationship and their feelings about being ‘girlfriends’ themselves. There is a short introductory voice-over spoken by a character called Alecky, which serves to explain the verbatim-theatre technique used in the play.

The Royal Court premiere was directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins and designed by Lizzie Clachan, with Debbie Chazen as Tessa, Esther Coles as Amber, Lu Corfield as Poppy, Beatie Edney as Suzie and Alex Lowe as Man (playing various punters).

The production transferred to the Young Vic, London, on 29 July 2009 (previews from 24 July).

In three short months, Oscar Wilde, the most celebrated playwright and wit of Victorian England, was toppled from the apex of British society into humiliation and ruin. Drawing from trial documents, newspaper accounts, and writings of the key players, Moisés Kaufman ignites an incendiary mix of sex and censorship, with a cast of characters ranging from George Bernard Shaw to Queen Victoria herself.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring JB Blanc, Dakin Matthews, Ian Ogilvy, Peter Paige, Julian Sands, Simon Templeman, John Vickery, Douglas Weston and Matthew Wolf.

Featuring: JB Blanc, Dakin Matthews, Ian Ogilvy, Peter Paige, Julian Sands, Simon Templeman, John Vickery, Douglas Weston, Matthew Wolf

Nadia Fall's Home is a verbatim drama that combines real testimonials with music and song to explore the issue of homelessness amongst young people in London. It was first performed in The Shed, a temporary studio venue at the National Theatre, London, on 9 August 2013 (previews from 7 August).

The play's action is set in an inner-city high-rise hostel for the homeless, Target East. We encounter the hostel's residents and workers, each speaking to an unseen interviewer. Amongst them are: Bullet, who doesn’t want to call a hostel home; Eritrean Girl, who was smuggled into the country in a lorry; Singing Boy, who dreams of seeing his name in lights; and Garden Boy, who just wants to feel safe.

In an introduction to the published script (Nick Hern Books, 2013), Nadia Fall writes: 'I carried out interviews with the residents and some staff at [one of the largest hostels in East London] between autumn 2012 and spring 2013, collecting over thirty hours of interviews that have formed this play. ... I hope this play and the accompanying research and writing carried out by Esta [Orchard, Fall's friend and collaborator, and an active campaigner for young people] will give a voice to the all-too-often silenced young people of our capital'.

The National Theatre premiere was directed by Nadia Fall and designed by Ruth Sutcliffe, with music by Tom Green and Shakka. It was performed by Michaela Coel, Jonathan Coote, Trevor Michael Georges, Kadiff Kirwan, Ashley McGuire, Grace Savage, Shakka, Antonia Thomas and Toby Wharton.

The Trial of Alger Hiss, The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, The Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer. At the height of the cold War, American democracy was challenged by the anti-Communist atmosphere of the McCarthy era. In the Name of Security re-opens three famous spy cases that rocked America between 1948 and 1954: Alger Hiss, Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Each hour-long program combines dramatic re-enactments based on original trial transcripts, archival material, new evidence, the latest assessments of American historians and scientists, and the commentaries of relatives and friends of the accused.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring John de Lancie, William Frankfather, Arthur Hanket, Ella Joyce, Richard Hoyt Miller, David Hyde Pierce, Amy Pietz, Tom Virtue and Alan Wilder,

Featuring: John de Lancie, William Frankfather, Arthur Hanket, Ella Joyce, Richard Hoyt Miller, David Hyde Pierce, Amy Pietz, Tom Virtue, Alan Wilder

In 1611 John Donne was living in a restless, changing world, in which a new Bible, a new science, and a decadent court tore at longstanding loyalties and deeply-held convictions.

Unceasingly protean himself, Donne lived several lives at once, writing political tracts as well as popular songs, translating the Song of Solomon at the same time as translating Galileo, and finding his rise in theological circles impeded by his colourful rakish past.

At various times a politician, soldier, poet, musician, lawyer, courtier, theologian and cleric; a man born into one of England's most distinguished Catholic families who would die as one of its most renowned Protestants; Donne was always becoming something new. Into Thy Hands is a portrait of this fascinating, eloquent and brilliant man, and his struggle to be faithful to all parts of his body and soul.

First presented in 2011 at Wilton’s Music Hall as part of Jericho House’s 1611 Utopia season, Into Thy Hands is a play about faith, sex and the translation of the Bible.

What do you know about abortion? What do you think about it? Why can we debate it as an idea, but not talk about it as an experience?
With one in three women in the UK having had an abortion I Told My Mum I Was Going on an R.E. Trip . . . explores what seems to be one of society’s last taboos. A play written for a young, multi-talented female ensemble, I Told My Mum I Was Going on an R.E. Trip . . . uses verbatim text, live music, beats and rhyme to portray the stories of real women who’ve experienced pregnancy and abortion. This funny, frank, and moving play is about as far from a run-of-the-mill sexual health lecture as is imaginable.

For Layla, every day is a battleground. The pay gap, the thigh gap, over-sexed pop and selfies that are photoshopped – they’re just part of the world she lives in.

But that world is about to change. While breaking out of her bedroom – and with drama, comedy, poetry and music as her weapons – Layla breaks down and makes sense of the realities, difficulties and absurdities of teenage life in the UK today.

Collected from a bespoke national survey, the voices of a thousand UK teens are brought to life in Layla. Their ambitions, concerns, role-models and regrets are woven together by award-winning Sabrina Mahfouz and theatre company Theatre Centre, offering a hard-hitting, yet hopeful, story.

With honesty, humour and occasional anger, performer Bette Bourne tells the playwright Mark Ravenhill about his brave and flamboyant life. Crafted from transcripts of a series of long, private conversations, Bette reminisces and replays scenes from his life, from a post-war childhood, a stint as a classical actor in the late 1960s, to living in a drag commune in Notting Hill and being an active member of the Gay Liberation Front. Bette talks about touring with the New York-based Hot Peaches cabaret group and founding his own cabaret troop, the Bloolips, which redefined gay theatre by creating their very own unique celebration of dramatic and colourful homosexuality.

The piece, in three parts, reveals both a portrait of a pioneering, radical individual and a historical document of the struggles and achievements of gay liberation. A Life in Three Acts was first performed in 2009 as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.

Alecky Blythe's Little Revolution is a verbatim-theatre play about the London Riots, a series of related disturbances, including widespread looting and arson, that took place in several London boroughs (as well as in other towns and cities in England) in August 2011. It was first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 26 August 2014.

The play was created and performed using the verbatim-theatre techniques developed by Blythe with her company Recorded Delivery. It is composed entirely of material drawn from recordings made by Blythe, who personally interviewed many of the participants and witnesses of the riots. Those conversations, in edited form, are then reproduced by actors on stage. The script is a transcription of the final selection of material, although in rehearsal and performance the actors work from an in-ear audio feed to ensure that the original conversations are replicated with meticulous verisimilitude. Some names of interviewees have been changed

The play focuses on responses to the riots within an area of Hackney in east London. Blythe puts herself into the story and shows how she was tangentially caught up in the riots as they happened: in one episode, a group of looters catch her taking pictures and ask to inspect her camera before moving on. The main focus is on the response of two disparate groups in the aftermath of events. Middle-class residents who live around Clapton Square start a fund to come to the aid of a looted local shopkeeper and hold a street party to bring people together. Meanwhile, female activists on the adjacent, much poorer, Pembury estate start a campaign against the scapegoating of young people, stop-and-search police tactics and the social inequalities at the heart of the problem.

The Almeida Theatre premiere was directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins with a set designed by Ian MacNeil. The main cast, which included Roni Ancona, Lloyd Hutchinson, Imogen Stubbs, Rufus Wright and Alecky Blythe herself, was joined on stage by a community chorus.

London Road is a verbatim-theatre musical with book and lyrics by Alecky Blythe and music by Adam Cork. It is about the impact on the community around London Road in Ipswich of the series of murders carried out there by Steve Wright in 2006, and the frenzied media interest that ensued.

It was developed by the National Theatre, London, and first performed there in the Cottesloe auditorium on 14 April 2011 (previews from 7 April).

The musical traces the impact of the murders on the residents of London Road over a period from December 2006 until July 2008. The community had struggled for years with the soliciting and kerb-crawling that they frequently encountered in the area. As Steve Wright, the occupant of number 79, was arrested, charged and then convicted of the murders, residents grappled with the media frenzy and what it meant to be at the epicentre of this tragedy.

The book and lyrics are based on Alecky Blythe's extensive recorded interviews with the real residents of London Road, and composer Adam Cork’s score is a response to the melodic and rhythmic speech patterns captured on those recordings.

The National Theatre premiere was directed by Rufus Norris and designed by Katrina Lindsay. The cast was Clare Burt, Rosalie Craig, Kate Fleetwood, Hal Fowler, Nick Holder, Claire Moore, Michael Shaeffer, Nicola Sloane, Paul Thornley, Howard Ward and Duncan Wisbey.

Critical reaction was generally favourable with the Evening Standard describing it as ‘a startling, magically original success’, and Time Out declaring that 'this is something very new for the musical form, a powerful, beautiful and unsettling articulation of the ambivalence that underpins all communities'. Less enthusiastically, Brian Logan in The Guardian reported that 'the inarticulacy gets frustrating' and complained that 'the conventionally dramatic parts of this story are [often] happening offstage'.

London Road won the 2011 Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical and the production was revived in the National Theatre's larger Olivier auditorium with performances from 28 July 2012. This time the critical response was even more favourable, with Michael Billington in The Guardian reporting that 'This miraculously innovative show finds a new way of representing reality [and] opens up rich possibilities for musical theatre'.

A feature film version of the musical, written by Alecky Blythe and again directed by Rufus Norris, was released in June 2015. It starred Olivia Colman, Anita Dobson, Tom Hardy and the entire original cast of the National Theatre production.

‘“For years afterwards the farmers found them – the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades.” So run the blunt, grimly beautiful opening lines of the Welsh poet Owen Sheers’s elegy for the men, 4,000 of them from the 38th (Welsh) Division, who were killed or wounded in the Battle of Mametz Wood in July 1916… Sheers revisits that chapter of carnage in a stirring, sprawling promenade show… He draws on the writings of two survivors in particular. One is the poet David Jones whose fractured, enervated, modernist response to his war-time experiences, In Parenthesis, was hailed as a “work of genius” by TS Eliot. The other key influence is the writer Llewelyn Wyn Griffith… driven to wondering how the sun “could shine on this mad cruelty and on the quiet peace of an upland tarn near Snowdon”... We end up in dark woods and a place of numb desolation, bombarded by words that pierce the heart and vignettes that capture the stomach-churning sacrifice… The finest commemoration of the First World War centenary I’ve seen to-date, this deserves a much longer life.’ Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph

Mametz by Owen Sheers was premiered by National Theatre Wales in June 2014.

Britannia calls a meeting, to listen to her people. Caledonia, Cymru, East Midlands, North East, Northern Ireland and the South West bring the voices of their regions. The debate is passionate and opinions divided. Can there ever be a United Kingdom?

In the days following the Brexit vote, a team from the National Theatre of Great Britain spoke to people nationwide, aged 9 to 97, to hear their views on the country we call home. In a series of deeply personal interviews, they heard opinions that were honest, emotional, funny, and sometimes extreme.

These real testimonials are interwoven with speeches from party leaders of the time in this play by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and director Rufus Norris.

My Country opened at the National Theatre, London, in March 2017 before playing at venues around the UK.

On 15 September 2008, capitalism came to a grinding halt. As sub-prime mortgages and toxic securities continued to dominate the headlines well into 2009, the National Theatre asked David Hare to write an urgent and immediate work that sought to find out what had happened, and why.

Capitalism works when greed and fear are in the correct balance. This time they got out of balance. Too much greed, not enough fear.

Meeting with many of the key players from the financial world, David Hare, author of The Permanent Way and Stuff Happens, has created The Power of Yes: a compelling narrative, as enlightening as it is entertaining.

It's like a ship which you're being told is in apple-pie order, the decks are cleaned, the metal is burnished, the only thing nobody mentions, it's being driven at full speed towards an iceberg.

Not so much a play as a jaw-dropping account of how, as the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone.

The Power of Yes opened at the National Theatre, London, in September 2009.

You want me to have full penetrative sex with your son, right? I just wanted to, you know, check.

Jack, a young man with a learning disability, lives at home, cared for by his devoted parents. Like most men in their twenties, he has needs – his mates at the rugby club talk about nothing but getting laid, whilst Jack's most erotic experience to date is the time he was winked at by the pretty cashier in Lloyds. Desperate for their son to not feel left out, his parents decide to bring in a professional. But the woman they hire has a far more profound impact on the whole family than they could ever have imagined.

Written by writer Sarah Page, this text has been published to coincide with Kuleshov Theatre's 2017 production at Theatre503.

The acclaimed comedy trio known as Culture Clash spent three months interviewing about 70 Miami residents for this mix of vignettes about urban renewal, crimes, hurricanes and immigration, as well as where to get a plate of arroz con pollo served by a six foot drag queen.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Culture Clash: Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza.

Featuring: Culture Clash, Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, Herbert Siguenza

During the Apartheid years in South Africa, a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare was smuggled around the prison on Robben Island. The book’s significance resides in the fact that the book's owner, Sonny Venkatratham, passed it to a number of his fellow political prisoners in the single cells, including Nelson Mandela, asking them to mark their favourite passages with a signature and date. Informally known as "the Robben Island Bible", numerous prisoners selected the speeches that meant the most to them and their experience as political prisoners.

In 2008 and 2010, playwright and scholar Matthew Hahn conducted interviews with eight former political prisoners in South Africa. Offering a vivid and startling account of the experience of these political prisoners during Apartheid, this extraordinary verbatim play weaves Shakespeare's words together with first-hand accounts from these men. They offer their reflections on their time as Liberation activists and, twenty years later, on the costs, consequences and whether or not it was all worth it.

The play is published alongside a preface by Sonny Venkatrathnam and an introduction by South African actor, director , playwright and cultural activist John Kani.

I haven't hurt anyone, killed, raped, murdered - I just ran away - came here to be safe. But I'm locked up. I just - I can't believe this is England.

They have run away from unimaginable horrors looking only for safety. But, imprisoned together at Yarl's Wood Dentention Centre, these women are stuck in a limbo that offers them exactly the opposite.

Based on verbatim interviews from current and former detainees, The Scar Test takes you inside one of England's migrant detention centres, exposing the conditions the inmates must endure whilst awaiting a decision on their fate. Told with compassion, Hannah Khalil's play throws a spotlight on the harrowing ordeals of the female migrants seeking refuge in Britain and the obstacles they face in the process.

Published to coincide with its 2017 London and regional tour, The Scar Test originally debuted in 2015 with Untold Arts company. 

Stuff happens... And it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.

The famous response of Donald Rumsfeld, American Secretary of Defense, to the looting of Baghdad, at a press conference on 11 April 2003, provides the title for a new play, specially written for the Olivier Theatre, about the extraordinary process leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

How does the world settle its differences, now there is only one superpower? What happens to leaders risking their credibility with sceptical publics? From events which have dominated international headlines for the last two years David Hare has fashioned both a historical narrative and a human drama about the frustrations of power and the limits of diplomacy.

Stuff Happens premiered at the National Theatre, London, in 2004 season and has subsequently been performed around the world. In April 2006, it was given its New York premiere at the Public Theater in this new, slightly updated text.

At the beginning of the The Swing, one of the characters explains that in Kentucky in 1911 a black man was charged with murder and lynched on the stage of the local theatre. Bond’s short play is subtitled A Documentary: this true story is sparingly stylised into a powerful and profoundly shocking drama. Bond draws a detailed picture of the quotidian injustice of a community, headed by the store owner Mr Skinner, which can condone violent murder and drive people to madness. When his store is robbed and a young woman appears to have been attacked, Skinner accuses Fred with no evidence, and organises the grotesque staging of his death.

The Swing was first presented in 1976 at Inter-Action’s Almost Free Theatre, London.

At 11.40pm on 14 April 1912, the RMS Titanic, on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, struck an iceberg. At 2.20am the following morning, the ship sank. 1,517 people died.

In response to the disaster the British Government ordered an immediate inquiry and Lord Mersey was appointed commissioner. The British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry sat from 2 May to 3 July 1912. It took testimony from 97 witnesses.

Full of intrigue, bravery and human frailty, Titanic retells the survivors' stories, using dialogue taken word-for-word from the hundred-year-old accounts. The play premiered in April 2012 as the inaugural production of the MAC, Belfast.

Adapted directly from the actual transcripts, Unquestioned Integrity examines the notorious Senate Confirmation hearings when law professor Anita Hill charged Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas with sexual harassment.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Edward Asner, Ella Joyce and Paul Winfield.

Featuring: Edward Asner, Ella Joyce, Paul Winfield