Nonfiction Theater

The aim of this paper is to define documentary film. After a brief review of existing definitions, the author proposes his own. The methods of working on the set and the textual features of the films are considered as distinguishing documentary filmmaking from other film genres. Issues such as the filmmakers’ interference with the filmed reality, the criteria for distinguishing between fictional and non-fictional elements, the admissibility of special effects, the specificity of editing, and the place of the documentary film among other nonfictional genres are considered. The final definition is confronted with the most recent genres of documentary cinema, namely the animated documentary, the mockumentary and the web-documentary.

How can theatre, such an embodied and interactive cultural production, be taught online? This essay re-envisions the teaching of theatre in the era of virtual instruction, suggesting ways for students to participate actively in the theatrical genre. The result is an engaged online class in which students can analyze dynamic and ephemeral performances and understand audience interaction. This study details three course projects that range from solo documentary theatre performance creation, to playwrighting practice, and finally, live-streaming and participating as audience members to a staged production. Through these examples, this study explores new horizons in online theatre instruction, showing how technology can facilitate the delivery of content traditionally seen as a very embodied, live genre-- theatre praxis. The pandemic moment assisted in fast-forwarding the theatre world into thinking about creative solutions to creating togetherness and experiences of the liveness of art through the virtual format.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to develop an evidence-based resource for knowing and communicating the complexities involved for both males and females in implementing and sustaining a physically active lifestyle shortly after spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods: Synthesizing a set of qualitative and quantitative studies with over 500 spinal cord injured people, the article represents research utilizing the genre of ethnographic creative non-fiction. This genre of representation holds enormous potential for researchers in terms of disseminating their findings to diverse audiences beyond the academy, and having real impact. Results: The ethnographic creative non-fictions show together for the first time the barriers, determinants, benefits, trajectories, emotions, fears, preferred methods and messengers for delivering important physical activity information to men and women with a SCI. Conclusion: The article contributes to knowledge by showing the embodied complexities involved when in rehabilitation for both males and females in implementing and sustaining a physically active lifestyle shortly after SCI. It also makes a contribution to practice by providing researchers, health care professionals and disability user-groups with a theory and evidence based resource to assist in informing, teaching and enabling people living with SCI to initiate and maintain a physically active lifestyle. Stories may be a highly effective tool to communicate with and to influence spinal cord injured people’s activity.Implications for RehabilitationThe findings of this research showed the many benefits and barriers to developing and sustaining a physically active lifestyle shortly after spinal cord injury.The preferred methods and messengers for delivering physical activity information as well as the activity types, intensities and durations of physical activity for men and women were also shown.Within rehabilitation, spinal cord injured people need to be offered accessible knowledge about how to implement and sustain a physically active lifestyle over the life course. Stories may serve as a unique and powerful means to achieve this.

During the first decades of the 21st century, a critical re-assessment of the reenactment as a form of historical representation has taken place in the disciplines of history, art history and performance studies. Engagement with the reenactment in film and media studies has come almost entirely from the field of documentary studies and has focused almost exclusively on non-fiction, even though reenactments are being employed across fiction and non-fiction film and television genres. Working with an eclectic collection of case studies from Milk, Monster, Boys Don’t Cry, and The Battle of Orgreave to CSI and the video of police assaulting Rodney King, this book examines the relationship between the status of theatricality in the reenactment and the ways in which its relationships to reference are performed. Carrigy shows that while the practice of reenactment predates technically reproducible media, and continues to exist in both live and mediated forms, it has been thoroughly transformed through its incorporation within forms of technical media.

Different genres of acting have emerged in Europe during the 20th century. The naturalistic acting, the realistic acting, the absurd acting and the epic acting were outstanding. Among all of these, epic acting or docu-drama was able to make a significant change in this field of world theatre. This docu-drama theatre is considered the docu drama documentary theatre. This specific genre of theater is an acting method that provides many things to the spectators as it excludes the structure of Aristotelian theatre. The pioneer of this theoretical genre is the German dramatist Erwin Piscator. However, it was built up by Bertolt Brecht. Hence, this has been considered the Bertolt Brecht genre; later, Bertolt Brecht was able to make a new trend in the world’s theatre through this genre of acting. Dayananda Gunawardena was the predecessor who introduced the docu-drama genre to the Sri Lankan stage. Three dramas that he produced based on this genre are discussed here.

By exploring dynamic Jewish–Muslim interactions across North Africa and France through performance culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, this book offers an alternative chronology and lens to a growing trend in media and scholarship that views these interactions primarily through conflict. The book interrogates interaction that crosses the genres of theatre, music, film, art, and stand-up, emphasising creative influence and artistic cooperation between performers from the Maghrib, with a focus on Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and diaspora communities, notably in France. The plays, songs, films, images, and comedy sketches analysed are multilingual, mixing not only with the former colonial language French, but also the rich diversity of indigenous Amazigh and Arabic languages. The first section examines accents, affiliations, and exchange, with an emphasis on aesthetics, familiarity, changing social roles, and cultural entrepreneurship. The second section shifts to consider departure and lingering presence through spectres and taboos, in its exploration of absence, influence, and elision. The volume concludes with an autobiographical afterword, which reflects on memories and legacies of Jewish–Muslim interactions across the Mediterranean.