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Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.
Alexis de ToquevilleTheatre of Fact, like a fast sock in the jaw from, the thirties, has forced its way onto the American stage again. But unlike its noisy brawling predecessor, the Living Newspaper, which was fathered by the Federal Theatre out of the fertile discontent of the depression, this present brand of Theatre of Fact has lowered its voice and grown more decorous. It has entered the courtroom.
Two German playwrights have had a prime influence in the use of court records as dramatic material. Heinar Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Peter Weiss’ The Investigation, produced first in Germany and then here in the United States in the mid-sixties, effected radical departures in dramatic form insofar as they relied almost entirely on the sheer weight of fact and the dialectic of courtroom argument to provide the movement and emotion expected of an evening in the theatre.
1 Even Bucher was kept ignorant of some of the specifics of the intelligence mission. Stephen R. Harris, commanding officer of the intelligence section aboard the Pueblo admitted under cross examination that he did not reveal everything to Commander Bucher: “I told him (Bucher) there were projects involved in the future that were not necessary for his knowledge in order for him to perform his duties.” This was never mentioned in the play. Also missing from Pueblo was the serious and significant conflict of authority between Harris and Bucher, a matter that came up in the naval hearings.
2 “Article 24 of the Convention on Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone, adopted by the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea at Geneva in 1958 authorizes a coastal state to claim contiguous zones for enforcing customs, fiscal, immigration, or sanitary regulations. It limits the zone to a maximum distance of 12 miles measured from the base line of the territorial sea of the coast line state.”
“Contiguous Zones” Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 7, p. 687.
3 The New York Times, February 5, 1969, p. 16
4 With regard to Hochhuth and Theatre of Fact, see Martin Esslin's “Truth and Documentation: A Conversation with Rolf Hochhuth,” which is in Esslin's Book, Reflections: Essays on Modern Theatre, (Doubleday, 1969). One paragraph is worth quoting in full: “Did this mean, I asked Hochhuth, that he believes in Theatre of Fact, the Theatre of Documentation? He answered, “No. I became the champion of ‘documentary Theatre’ quite unintentionally. I only noticed what had happened when Piscator (who directed the first production of The Deputy) wrote a program note in which he used the term ‘documentary theatre.’ I am very unhappy about that catch phrase, for I believe it means very little. Pure documentation can never be more than a bunch of documents. Something must always be added to make a play.” p. 133. The italics belong to Esslin, but nicely punctuate the point we would make: Hochhuth's insistence on going beyond the facts for the sake of the dramatic and didactic.
5 A crucial distinction to be made between Epic Theatre and Theatre of Fact is in the latter's reliance on documents for dialogue. And it is just in this area that some marginal distinctions can be made among the playwrights who have created the post-war tradition of Theatre of Fact: Kipphardt invents monologues for major characters in his play In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, informing us of this created material only in the introduction of the published version; whereas Freed incorporates in Inquest what he calls “reconstruction”—material drawn from letters and notes that is woven into dialogue—but always lets the audience know when they are watching reconstruction.
6 For an insightful investigation of the ethical implications of form in the Oppenheimer play, see Eric Bentley's New York Times piece, “Oppenheimer Mon Amour,” March 16, 1969, Sunday Arts and Leisure, pp. 1 and 3). Inveighing against the playwright's unacknowledged alteration of fact, Bentley states: “I don't regard it as more important to write a good play than to tell the truth about J. Robert Oppenheimer.” Bentley's most telling criticism of the Oppenheimer play is that “it shuttles between fact and fiction without letting the audience know which is which.” All of this argues—and I would heartily agree—that veracity must be the cornerstone of any poetics of Theatre of Fact.
7 Inquest, (Hill and Wang, 1970), p. 3
8 What Maria Piscator and the characters in her play choose to call “The Speech on the Theatre” is actually the document entitled “The Debate on the Theatre Law of the Paris Commune, May 1871,” an addenda to Darko Suvin's article, “Organizational Mediation: The Paris Commune Theatre Law,” which appeared in the TDR Politics and Performance issue in the Summer of 1969.
9 Captain Jack's Revenge has been just recently published in New American Plays Volume, Four, edited by William M. Hoffman (Hill and Wang, 1971).
