Documentary Trial Plays in Contemporary American Theater

Conclusion: Cultural Legislation

169 Conclusion: Cultural Legislation Differences of opinion about the Vietnam War sent citizens into the streets during the 1960s and the 1970s in protest of national policies, and the protests put pressure on law enforcement and the federal government to control and punish citizens whose demonstrations turned violent or destructive. The war took many Americans beyond our borderlands, as they were drafted to fight on unfamiliar terrain with an enemy that existed across a great cultural and political divide. Other pressing issues of the period underscored the domestic differences that contributed to public strife in the contemporary age, beginning but not ending with opposing attitudes toward the defense of country and the defense of rights. These differences exacerbated a generational divide that was then acted out on the street and in the courtroom. Civil disputes that emerged from race, gender, and class inequities generated crimes that began or ended in legal proceedings. Government hearings challenged individuals on their politics and their mores; legal debates ensued on freedom of speech and expression, diversity rights, and the tension between private and public values and behavior. While none of these issues were new, they were renewed in representation through the development of their documentary theater recreations. C O N C L U S I O N 170 Legal issues in the last three decades of the twentieth century, particularly as they found their way into the public sphere through dramatic documentary representations, proved, both politically and theatrically, varied in perspective and in their methods of examination. Overwhelmingly, the high-profile cases that migrated from the courtroom to the theater focused on national debates, encouraging American audiences to examine their identities, define their social roles, and reassert their allegiances. Although a new century and millennium has not meant the end of these debates, the events of September 11, 2001, have forced Americans to finally, perhaps permanently, and more fully acknowledge its membership in a global world, and to devote increased attention to its relationships with peoples and nations beyond its shores. National security issues have become increasingly focused on global terrorism; the shock and the aftershocks of the September 11, 2001, attacks, as well as subsequent terrorist acts around the globe, have prompted an unprecedented engagement with world politics for Americans, many of whom had little prior knowledge of the geography of the Middle East, let alone its religious, political, and economic complexities before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. For these reasons and others, the documentary theater of the twenty-first century has been focused primarily on international terror, prosecutorial torture, contested territorial boundaries, and other transnational topics. Anna Deavere Smith’s dramatic meditation on illness, suffering, resilience , and the human body, performed in her signature solo style, was an important exception to this trend. Her performance text on death and dying, with its critique of an inadequate American medical system and an unsupportive community structure, ascended the boards during the fall 2009 theater season; Let Me Down Easy, in its New York production, was staged by the Public Theater just as the national debate on health care legislation hit Congress and the press. International themes, on the other hand, provided the genesis for a handful of other documentary works: the British play Guantanamo: Honour Bound to Defend Freedom (2004) by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, which premiered at London’s Tricycle Theater, examines the life of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The London stage has also been the site of origin for other new plays using verbatim materials drawing from the political and, in the first two cases, international arenas: Stuff Happens (2004) chronicles the political positions displayed and the debates ensuing over the months leading up to the beginning, in 2003, of the Iraqi war, using real speeches and re-created conversations as well as fictionalized exchanges. My Name Is Rachel Corrie (2005) was edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from journal entries and e-mail messages 171 C U L T U R A L L E G I S L A T I O N composed by the title character, an American killed by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza during a protest over a house razing. The show was produced in London before moving to New York amidst a blaze of angry objections to its perceivably pro-Palestinian politics. Frost/Nixon (2006) was assembled by British film director and dramatist Peter...