For a verbatim ethnography

In recent years, documentary theatre – a category of staged performance in which the actual words of real people are edited into a script and performed on-stage by actors – has burgeoned in popularity. Although such productions are rarely driven by concerns that are primarily scholarly or ‘anthropological’, their recent proliferation serves as a timely reminder that theatre can be a powerful and popular medium through which to present ethnographic materials to a public audience. In particular, the ‘verbatim technique’ pioneered by Anna Deveare Smith and subsequently adopted (and adapted) by playwrights such as Alecky Blythe and Dan Canham represents an exciting new possibility for ethnographic representation, perfectly suited to the intellectual needs of an anthropology currently undergoing the ‘affective turn’. Its potential resides in the way it inculcates an ethnographic sociality by instantiating affectively charged relations between and among both audience members and those on stage, allowing anthropological insights to not just be known, but also felt. However, as I show through a discussion of a production that sought to encourage community reflections on their own situation of chronic underemployment, the ‘verbatim theatre’ format carries limitations as well as potential. Deploying a more strictly anthropological sensibility might reap rich rewards in crafting works that are artistically, intellectually, and ethically satisfying