In Conversation

Continuing a practice inaugurated a year ago with our publication of Guillermo Gómez-Peña's 1998 ATHE keynote address, Theatre Topics is pleased to open this issue with a conversation with playwright and director Emily Mann, the keynote speaker at ATHE's 1999 conference in Toronto. From Still Life (1980), the story of three individuals coping with the aftermath of the Vietnam War, to Greensboro (1996), an account of the Ku Klux Klan's assault on an anti-Klan rally in 1979 that left five people dead, Mann has won international acclaim for forging a compelling approach to documentary political theatre. This "theatre of testimony" weaves oral history and verbatim interview into often chilling dramatizations of private stories and public events, particularly those dealing with both victims and survivors of violence and oppression. Her canon also includes such celebrated works as Annulla (1985), the recollection of a Holocaust survivor; Execution of Justice (1986), a courtroom drama of the trial of Dan White, the man who killed San Francisco's openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk and mayor George Moscone; and Having Our Say (1994), an oral history that documents the struggles and achievements of two centenarian African American sisters.

This conversation--an open conference session in which Mann informally answered questions about her work--is presented here substantially as it took place on 29 July 1999, the day following her keynote speech. The editor would like to thank Jeffery Elwell, who moderated the forum, and Julie Jordan, who prepared and edited the transcript. ¹

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I've been thinking about this idea of a theatre of testimony, and how Anna Deavere Smith and others of our generation have pioneered taking people's words and constructing them as stage pieces. Is there anything generational in the urge to do this? I've been struck by the ideas of "testimony" and "witness" as huge phenomena in theatre practice--surviving is finding the safe places where you can testify and witness, have your experience affirmed and confirmed. I've been thinking about how the power to control your story and voice is the act of empowerment. And I'm curious about your own personal legacy--having your own parents involved in testimony. Do you have thoughts about why this practice is so appealing at this particular time?

EMILY MANN: You're bringing up a lot of points: generational, experiential, and the memory of who one is and where one comes from, as well as the question of, "Why at this moment?" I don't know if I can answer all of those questions. I can just give you a story. In some ways, I was influenced deeply by two men simultaneously in my life who were spiritual fathers to me. One was my real father, Arthur Mann. The other was Professor John Hope Franklin, my father's best friend when I was growing up. Professor Franklin is eighty-four years old now and doing very well. He was and is responsible for the study of the black experience in America. I was blessed to be part of his changes from the time I was a little girl. I've known him since I was eight years old.

Franklin was always with my father in terms of an historical understanding of this country. And they both backed the idea of learning about history through authentic experience. Through oral history. Talk to the people who lived it. If they're alive now--catch them. So, when the tape recorder became available more and more to people, my father was dealing with the American Jewish experience and John Hope with the African American experience. Since we had weekly dinner together as two families, whatever these men learned from their students, or whatever their students were doing, whatever things were being collected, seemed to come to dinner with them. I learned a lot about history by hearing about what happened to real people. And this just became part of my life.

When I started directing plays, people kept...