Thinking about the different ways that we share life narratives while sitting in on a choreography rehearsal for a musical I am directing got me thinking about auto/biographical theatre. Schaffer and Smith, in their article about life narratives in the field of human rights, discuss how stories from places with little access to printing must go through Western channels in order to be published. This means that stories “may lose their local specificity and resonance in translation” (11). They go through multiple screening processes before they even hit the shelves.

Theatre, unlike print or film, does not require extensive amounts of equipment. It can exist just about anywhere where someone can write a script and there are people who can act in it. Theatre companies like Shakespeare in the Parking Lot have proven that you don’t even need a stage in order to make art.

Does this make theatre a more accessible form of sharing life narratives? Julie Ann Ward, in her dissertation, talks about an experience seeing a piece of biographical theatre in Mexico City where a woman played herself in a story about her mother. The fact that the character was in fact the same person as the actor made the story seem more “real” (4). She also notes that in Latin America, even in poorer areas, auto/biographical theatre is very common (5).

Theatre, I argue, is a form of storytelling that can be accessible to many. It is not uncommon for theatre productions to be created without anyone getting paid, actors, directors, and crew included. It can be created with minimal or low costs, is not required to be situated in any particular geographical area, and it allows artists the freedom to share their life narratives in a form that does not need to go through layers of publishing houses or production companies. The local specificity is maintained, and the representation of the life narrative can be controlled by the director, who may very well be the writer as well. The physical presence of actors, too, may allow those watching to feel more closely connected to the narratives they are hearing.

Yet, theatre can have the opposite effect as well. As Ward argues, the collaborative nature of theatre and the acknowledgement by the audience that what they’re watching is not organic but created by multiple people and rehearsed and in that sense, not “real,” can distance the audience from the story being told (5). Additionally, though theatre can be a more accessible and direct venue for those wanting to share their stories, it does not have the broad scope that film or writing might. Theatre, unless filmed, can not be shared through the internet or brought to different parts of the world as easily as film or writing. Most plays run in one city, and so sharing a piece of auto/biographical theatre with a wider audience is not an achievable without time, commitment, money and interest.

So where does theatre lie in the study of life narratives? I see it as both a point of access in sharing stories and an imperfect form with limited scope. Future research might detail how representations of life narratives differ in live performance as opposed to pre-created forms, or how they differ from collaborative theatre to one man shows.

Works Cited

Smith, Sidonie, and Kay Schaffer. “Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights.” Biography 27.1 (2004): 1-24. Project MUSE. Web. 28 February 2016.

Ward, Julie Ann. Self, Esteemed: Contemporary Auto/biographical Theatre in Latin America. Diss. University of California, Berkley, 2013. Web. 28 February 2016.

This week’s presentation on archival materials in my ASTU 100 class made me think about the media’s role in representing marginalized voices. Particularly, the project detailing Chinese immigration through the Chung family reminded me of how big a role media can play in public perception of marginalized subjects. The group’s layout, with the dominant white narrative about Chinese immigration on one side, and the comparatively sparse accounts of Chinese immigrants themselves on the other side, stood out to me because it showed how much information being brought to the public was racist or just lacking of firsthand knowledge of immigrant experiences.

As Jiwani and Young point out in their analysis of the media coverage of missing and murdered women in Vancouver, this representation can have a “backlash” on the subjects being represented (901) and, in some cases, further oppress the marginalized. With media coverage focusing on certain aspects of events or spewing a certain kind of rhetoric, it’s likely public opinion will be influenced by what people see and hear every day. In the case of missing and murdered women, the idea that these women are somehow deserving of violence can normalize this violence and, as a result, allow it to continue happening (901).  Similarly, racist rhetoric about Chinese immigrants would have been complicit in creating widespread anti-immigrant sentiments, as well as eliciting hate crimes.

The matter of media representation also applies to current race relations in the United States. As the Huffington Post Article “When The Media Treats White Suspects and Killers Better Than Black Victims” by Nick King points out, media coverage of white male perpetrators of crime have focused on the redeeming qualities of suspects and killers, portraying them as “brilliant” but troubled, misguided, or mentally ill. Meanwhile, black male victims of crime or violence, particularly police brutality, have been characterized by criminal records or drug use. Similar to Jiwani and Young’s sentiment, King writes that “the headlines seem to suggest that black victims are to blame for their own deaths,” because of past mistakes, but white perpetrators should be recognized for past accomplishments.

Is media representation of marginalized subjects suggesting that some lives matter more than others? And if so, what repercussions does this have?

Well, as this article about the Charleston shooting details, public outcry began when people felt that major media sources were not giving adequate coverage to the shooting because the victims were black and the perpetrator white, as opposed to the other way around. Jiwani and Young, too, mention how a “hierarchy of crime” (Meyers, qtd. in Jiwani and Young 900) exists in media suggesting that some crimes are subject to more media coverage than others (900).

If media coverage is only being given to a certain kind of victim, or if victims are seen as deserving of violence, this sort of violence can become normalized, just as racism was normalized with the Chines Head Tax and Japanese Internment in Canada. People are less likely to do anything about it, and thus the cycles of violence and oppression can continue. I would argue that media representation of marginalized voices can contribute and has contributed directly to oppression, and that a critical lens is needed when looking at the news, television, and radio that we are constantly exposed to so that we can see whom these stories do and do not benefit.

Works Cited

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31.4 (2006): 895-917. ProQuest. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.

Noman, Natasha. “14 #CharlestonShooting Tweets Show How the Media Covers White Terrorism.” News.Mic. Mic, 18 June 2015. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.

Wing, Nick. “When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims.” Huffpost Black Voices. Huffington Post, 14 Aug. 2014. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.