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.